


The Various Definitions of "Help"

by rubyelf



Series: Various Definitions [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: BDSM, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Medical, Psychological Trauma, Rape/Non-con References, Teamwork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-23
Updated: 2014-05-06
Packaged: 2017-12-12 19:15:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 47
Words: 148,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/815052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rubyelf/pseuds/rubyelf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint's method of dealing with the aftermath of Loki's mind control is to completely avoid dealing with it. This is not tremendously effective and his teammates are concerned. Of course, their methods of assisting him are somewhat unorthodox, and there are some other distractions, particularly for the scientists... but the situation becomes more alarming when Clint's avoidance tactics turn dangerous.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Clint was used to being alone. Snipers work alone. Spies work alone. He’s been a secret agent so deep under cover that sometimes he wasn’t even sure who he was really working for anymore. Even if Natasha was with him, chances were good she was working the opposite side. He’d been held prisoner, tortured for information (which he’d never given, usually because he didn’t have it; S.H.I.E.L.D. agents don’t know any more than they need to know), and kept in psychiatric isolation for weeks after a long mission while the assessment teams determined whether he’d been compromised or broken or turned the wrong way. Fury put a stop to that eventually; he trusted Barton, trusted him to be the agent watching over the Tesseract and everyone working on it. He was trained to resist torture, mind control, brainwashing, anything else they might try. He was not, however, trained to resist Asgardian magic, and if there’s training that could teach you to do that, someone at S.H.I.E.L.D. was undoubtedly working on the project right now, but that didn’t help Clint much. Actually, it didn’t help him at all, because if he ever did see Loki again, he intended to put an arrow through his forehead well before the psychotic bastard could get near him with whatever weird tool of destruction he was wielding. Clint did not intend to be compromised again.

When informed by Fury that he was going to be stationed in Stark Tower with the rest of the Avengers, he wanted nothing to do with it, but you don’t say no to Fury, so he decided that instead he’d just piss Tony off with a list of ridiculously unreasonable demands and let Tony deal with Fury, because Tony _does_ say no to Fury… not always successfully, but he does it, and it is his tower, after all.

First he insisted on a room at the top of the tower, knowing that those were Tony’s research and development labs and his workspace and his private spaces. To his surprise, Tony cheerfully agreed. Then he demanded that his room be equipped, along with the regular furniture and accompaniments, with a loft accessible only by rope ladder and a hammock along with the bed to sleep in. Tony seemed to find this demand amusing, but he assured Clint it wouldn’t be a problem. Then Clint demanded a secret outdoor perch accessible only from his loft where he could sit outside and watch the city, and Tony laughed and asked him if he wants his nest built out of metal or sticks. Clint was a bit suspicious, but Tony seemed to be genuinely pleased with the idea of having all the Avengers in Stark Tower, so he let it go.

Once he moved in, he assumed Natasha didn’t have much of a choice. In Coulson’s absence, Natasha had probably been assigned as his default handler, since Fury knows Clint will probably listen to her a decent percentage of the time. Clint also suspected, of course, that Natasha and Tony had probably been assigned to monitor and report on each other, each without the other’s knowledge. He was quite certain everyone has been instructed to report on him. He was the one who was compromised, after all. They thought Loki was out of his head, but nobody wanted to make assumptions. Clint knew Loki wasn’t out of his head, not completely, because the fragments of things he didn’t want to remember were still there, and they weren’t going away.

 

 

 

“Good morning, Agent Barton,” JARVIS said, and as Clint rolled over in his hammock, he realized it was the third or fourth time he’d said it.

“What?” he demanded, trying to nestle back down into the hidden cocoon of his blankets and pillows.

“The rest of the team requested that you join them for breakfast today. You agreed to their request. They’ve asked me to awaken you to…”

“Fuck,” Clint muttered.

“Agent Barton, you are aware that waking up at the proper hour might be easier if you considered taking less than three times the normally prescribed dosage of sleeping pills.”

Clint sat up and swung his feet to the floor. “Yeah, yeah. I thought you had instructions to give me whatever I needed to sleep.”

“I do, sir. But I also have instructions to monitor your usage. And to monitor whether you are engaging in other questionable practices such as taking significantly higher than recommended dosages of anti-anxiety medications.”

“Don’t you have some kind of calculations or something you’re supposed to be doing for Stark?”

“The work Mr. Stark currently has me occupied with requires only a minor fraction of my processing ability.”

“So you’re wasting the rest of it counting pills?”

“Negative, sir. I wasted approximately 0.3 nanoseconds doing that.”

“Sorry to take up so much of your time,” Clint grumbled, kicking the rope ladder off the edge of the loft and hooking his feet in to climb down. He knew pulling the ladder up at night to keep people away was all for show; he could see the recessed spot in the ceiling that he was pretty sure held another ladder JARVIS could deploy if ordered to. He made his way to the shower and stood under the cascade of hot water for a long time, trying to wake up. Apparently it had been longer than he’d thought, because when he stepped out of the bathroom in a towel, the team had apparently gotten tired of waiting for him, because now Thor was sitting in the armchair across the room, beaming cheerfully.

“Good morning, Hawk.”

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

Thor blinked. “Coming to fetch you for breakfast. Natasha told me…”

“Yeah, it would be Natasha. I’m coming. Let me put some clothes on.”

“Very well,” Thor said contentedly, leaning back in the chair.

Clint glanced at him. “I meant, go away so I can put some clothes on without you sitting there watching me do it.”

Thor chuckled and rose to his feet. “Are you assuming I am unaccustomed to seeing male bodies unclothed? I do happen to have all of the same basic equipment that the rest of you have, and some of the other members of the team don’t seem…”

“If you’re talking about the fact that Tony doesn’t seem to give a shit who sees him dressed or undressed or anything in between…”

Thor grinned. “Yes. Well, we’re waiting for you for breakfast. And Dr. Banner requested that I tell you to hurry your lazy ass up, because he’s hungry.”

“He wouldn’t say that if I was standing there with my bow and an arrow.”

“He might,” Thor said, shrugging. “From the way your eyes look at the moment, I’m not sure you could hit him with it even if you were standing in front of him.”

“Fuck off.”

He regretted it slightly, because Thor was the only member of the team who still actually looked genuinely hurt when Clint was unkind to him, but at least the Asgardian departed without further comment, closing the door behind him.

 

 

 

Clint made his way to the elevator and down to the kitchen.

“Shall I notify the rest of the team you’ve decided to join them?” JARVIS asked.

“You don’t think they’ll figure that out when I step off the elevator in ten seconds?”

“Eighteen seconds, sir.”

“Are you trying to piss me off this morning?”

“No, sir. I have not been programmed to piss people off. However, if I may note, if you wait another hour and twenty-seven minutes it will no longer be morning.”

Clint forced himself to remember the futility of arguing with a computer and waited in sullen silence until the elevator doors opened.

The sun was shining brightly through the floor-to-ceiling glass panels that followed the curved front wall of the room. Tony and Bruce were seated at the table, Tony leaning back with his feet propped on the chair beside him, both of them examining something on a tablet together while stabbing distractedly at food on their plates with their free hands. Steve, apparently the designated chef for the morning, was at the stove, and an impressive stack of pancakes was accumulating on a plate beside him. Natasha perched on a barstool at the counter, either keeping an eye on the Captain’s cooking or avoiding Tony (or both), and Thor was sprawled on the sofa in jeans and bare feet, looking unhappily at the ceiling.

“Well, good morning, sunshine,” Tony said, looking up from whatever he was working on and taking a moment to stab a mouthful of potatoes.

Natasha glanced over her shoulder and gave him a sharp glare.

“What?” he protested. “I can’t sleep in?”

“Well, there’s lots of things you shouldn’t be doing, but being a dick to team members is on the list.”

Clint sighed and looked toward Thor. “I’m sorry I told you to fuck off. I’m not feeling great this morning.”

Thor sat up with a bright smile. “You’re not angry with me, Hawk?”

“No. I was just in a foul mood.”

He should have known the Asgardian well enough to expect that a moment later he would be lifted nearly off his feet in a rib-crushing hug.

“Put him down before you break him,” Bruce said mildly.

Thor set Clint back on his feet and brushed off his shoulders. “Sorry.”

“No harm done,” Clint said.

“Pancakes,” Thor declared, pointing toward the kitchen. “They are delicious. However, Steve has informed me that I have already eaten more than twenty of them and he isn’t going to cook any more for me, so I shall have to learn how to make them myself.”

Bruce snorted. “Last time you tried to cook something, you set the kitchen on fire.”

“Is fire not part of the cooking process?” Thor retorted, crossing his arms.

“Not usually inside,” Natasha interrupted.

“We could take him camping,” Tony suggested. “Then he can cook anything over a fire that he wants.”

“Do you think mosquitoes could digest Asgardian blood?” Bruce asked.

“They’d have to be able to get their proboscis through the skin first,” Tony said.

“Yeah, but a mosquito proboscis is a lot smaller than…”

“Thor, are you busy later?” Tony asked.

Thor glanced at him suspiciously. “Why?”

“No particular reason. Just a little experiment.”

“I think I will find a reason to be busy, thank you.”

Natasha motioned for Clint to join her at the counter, and Steve immediately plopped a plate full of pancakes and sausage in front of him. Clint raised his eyebrows.

“I don’t need that much…”

Steve looked up at the ceiling. “JARVIS, how long has it been since Agent Barton had anything to eat?”

“Assuming that one does not consider pills to be a form of food, thirty-nine hours,” JARVIS answered.

“Is that fucking thing ever _not_ watching us?” Clint complained.

“No,” Tony said. “Eat your food before you annoy Natasha. For some completely unknown reason, every time something pisses her off, I get a call from Fury about someone filing another nasty report about me.”

“Since when do you care about reports filed about you?” Bruce asked, looking up from the tablet.

“I don’t. But it means I have to deal with Fury, and that’s time that could be better spent doing other things. Like, for example, categorizing the exact shade of red that Captain America’s face turns when you say the word ‘vagina’ in his presence.”

“Tony,” Natasha snapped.

“What? He does the same thing if you say ‘penis’…”

Natasha ignored him and turned back to Clint. “Eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

She raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t ask if you were hungry. Eat.”

Clint poked at the stack of pancakes, poured some syrup over them, and set about mashing them into a paste, hoping Natasha wouldn’t notice that none of them were actually gone. She caught him at it and rolled her eyes.

“Are you three years old? Eat.”

“Are you my mother? Leave me the fuck alone.”

“No,” she said. “Clint… none of us are going to leave you alone.”

He looked up and around the room, realizing everyone was watching him. He tried to laugh.

“Okay, what. Is this an intervention? They have TV shows now for that, you know.”

“We’re a team,” Steve said, expertly flipping a pancake with a flick of his wrist. “You have to be a functional part of it.”

“I am a functional part of it,” Clint protested.

“Really?” Tony asked. “Because it sort of looks more like you’re working on being as non-functional as possible.”

“Did Fury put you guys up to this?” Clint demanded.

Natasha shook her head, and he refused to look at her, because he didn’t like seeing real emotion in Natasha’s eyes; it was rare enough to get under his skin.

“No, Clint. We didn’t want to take it to Fury. If he finds out what kind of shape you’re in, he’ll pull you out of here and stick you in a S.H.I.E.L.D. psych ward, and we’d really rather that not happen. Unless it has to.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Yes,” she said.

Clint shoved his plate away. “I’m not playing this game. Report it to Fury. Report it to anybody the fuck you want.”

He stormed back to the elevator. The doors slid closed on a room full of accusing faces.

“Sir? Where to?” JARVIS asked.

“I don’t know. Somewhere they won’t look for me.”

“If you leave the tower, I’m required to report it.”

“I know, I know. Just take me down to the indoor range.”

“Of course, sir.”

He leaned back against the cool wall of the elevator. The panic was clenching in his stomach again, and thinking about the inside of a S.H.I.E.L.D. psych ward didn’t help calm it down any. He reached into his pocket and found the handful of pills tucked away there, separated a few with his fingers, and swallowed them quickly.

“Sir, that’s…”

“I know what the fucking recommended dosage is, JARVIS. Shut up.”

 

 

 

The doors opened, and the lights automatically flashed on, illuminating the soundproofed, fire-proofed, explosion-resistant, indoor shooting range Tony had installed. In the entryway, a row of shiny lockers awaited, each with a small, square screen on the front; Tony didn’t like people playing with his toys, and he couldn’t very well only put locks on his own stuff. Clint pressed his palm to the screen and waited.

“That’s not going to work, sir,” JARVIS said.

“Why not? What did they do, lock up my bows?” Clint demanded.

“No, sir, but that’s Agent Romanov’s locker, and I don’t expect you have matching palm prints.”

Fuck, Clint thought, moving to the next locker, which opened and popped out a rack of assorted bows and trays of arrows. He wasn’t doing a very good job proving to them how functional he was if he couldn’t find his own locker. Oh, well. He’d show them he could still do the one thing he was good for, at least.

Considering the range had to make do with indoor spaces, it really wasn’t much of a challenge for a sniper, no matter how small a target Clint set up, but today his usual targets seemed annoyingly elusive. His shots were close, but not perfect. His shots were _always_ perfect. He reached for a different bow and tried again. This time he realized he was missing the target completely, and that just wasn’t possible. He looked down the range, trying to spot where his arrows had ended up, but his eyes wouldn’t focus well enough to spot the dark shafts against the dark backstop.

“Well, fuck,” he muttered.

“Sir, you are aware that impaired coordination and cognitive functioning are…”

“JARVIS, don’t you have someone else to harass?”

“Sir, I’m fully capable of harassing multiple people at once.”

“Of course you are.”

He returned the bow to the rack and sat down on the bench, leaning back against the wall.

“Are they serious about Fury pulling me out of here and… all that?”

“Sir, your mental status is currently far past the level that S.H.I.E.L.D. protocol would consider dangerously insufficient for normal functioning.”

“Who gives a fuck what they think anyway?” he muttered. “JARVIS, take me back up to my room.”

“Sir, you would have to be in the elevator for me to do that.”

Oh, right, he thought fuzzily. He stood up, intending to proceed in the direction of the elevator, but he suddenly found himself proceeding abruptly in the direction of the floor, which was unforgivingly hard. Something flashed through his head about Tony inventing some kind of carpeting that provided proper cushioning for people when they fell, which you’d think he would already have invented, considering how much the man drank sometimes, but if he had invented it, he hadn’t installed it in here, because this floor was cold and hard under his cheek, and the lights were unpleasantly bright. He opened his mouth to order JARVIS to turn them down, but couldn’t remember what to say, and then he was out.

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor comes to the rescue, then makes popcorn. Natasha is over-protective. Tony has ideas, some of which are good. Sarcastic Bruce is saracastic. And Captain America doesn't want your hands in his popcorn unless you ask first.

“Little Hawk! What are you doing on the floor?”

Clint winced. Of course it would be Thor; they’d probably sent Thor to look for him because they figured he wouldn’t yell at him twice in one day. He tried to answer, but he didn’t seem to be able to coordinate anything like a sentence. It was complicated enough to negotiate sliding himself against the wall into a sitting position, considering the way the room was spinning.

“Hi, Thor.”

“You don’t look well, friend.”

The tall man was on one knee, studying him. Clint shrugged. “Been better.”

“Are you ill?”

“I’m fine.”

“The team doesn’t seem to think you are fine, friend.”

“Yeah. I got that.”

“I’ll take you to your room. Can you get up?”

“Yeah.” Then, after he tried it: “No.”

Thor briskly rose to his feet, hooked his hands under the smaller man’s arms, and hauled him to his feet. The abrupt motion didn’t help Clint’s head or his stomach at all, and despite his efforts to get his feet under him he realized he’d gone about as solid as jelly. Thor muttered something unhappy and, without much effort, hooked an arm behind Clint’s knees, taking them out from under him and lifting him up into the air. He would have protested, but there didn’t seem to be much logic in trying, and besides, Thor’s chest through the T-shirts he’d been convinced to wear in place of his armor was considerably warmer than the floor, if not much softer.

 

 

 

He found himself deposited in a bed, but something told him it wasn’t his. He opened his eyes and found that unlike his bed, this one had clearly been recently slept in. Thor’s bed, perhaps, since it wouldn’t make much sense for Thor to put him in someone else’s bed?

“Stay here, friend. I’ll go and get the others.”

“I don’t want the others.”

Thor frowned and sat down on the bed. “Yes, but I don’t know how to help you.”

“Yeah, well, neither to do they. So don’t bother.”

“What can I do for you, Hawk?”

“Sleep would be good.”

Thor shook his head. “I don’t think that’s going to help.”

“Why not?”

“Because all of the nightmares will still be there when you wake up.”

Clint rubbed his face. “I didn’t know gods had nightmares.”

“You think we’re never troubled in sleep by things we don’t wish to think about while awake? We have regrets too, my friend.”

“I guess you do.”

Thor studied him carefully. “I would hear of your nightmares, if you wished to speak of them.”

“I don’t wish to speak of them. And you don’t want to hear them.”

Thor lowered his head. “It would be difficult to hear of my brother’s misdeeds and the pain they cause you, but…”

Clint shook his head. “Look. If I tell you something, will you please not go back and report it to everyone else?”

“I swear I will not.”

“Good. JARVIS, go eavesdrop somewhere else.”

“Very good, sir.”

Thor chuckled. “He probably grows tired of listening to Stark and Dr. Banner talking about their science.”

“Okay, listen. I don’t _know_ what the nightmares are about. I don’t remember most of what happened between when Loki showed up out of his portal and when Natasha smacked him out of my head. I don’t remember, and I don’t really want to, and if I _don’t_ remember them long enough, they’ll go away.”

“Does that work?” Thor asked curiously.

Clint shrugged. “I’ve had nightmares before, after missions. They always went away eventually.”

“But you didn’t do this to yourself to get rid of them, did you?”

“These ones seem to be… a little more persistent.”

“Perhaps they don’t intend to go away until you’ve allowed them to be properly remembered,” Thor said.

“Are you a shrink now?” Clint snapped.

Thor frowned and looked at his hands. “Am I shrinking?”

Clint tried not to laugh, but he couldn’t help it. “Nope. You look just as gigantic as ever. The only time you look small is next to the Hulk, and we haven’t seen him for a while.”

“A most worthy adversary,” Thor mused. “Stark has proposed that he could find a way to cause Dr. Banner to transform into the Hulk again so that I would have a suitable sparring partner.”

“If Tony turns Bruce back into the Hulk just for you to play with, Fury will have his head,” Clint said, shaking his head. “Why don’t you spar with Steve? He can handle it.”

“I can spar with him without injuring him, but not, apparently, without embarrassing him…”

Clint had to laugh again. Saying that Thor’s style of hand-to-hand combat was “full contact” was like saying that the Hulk might be slightly destructive on occasion, and Steve didn’t seem to know what to do with over six feet of muscular, blond-haired demigod straddling him.

“Can I bring you some water, or anything at all?” Thor asked.

“No. But your bed’s really comfortable.”

“Stay right where you are. You’re welcome in my bed any time you wish.”

Clint snorted and considered pointing out the implications of that statement, but after thinking about it, he decided that it was possible that Thor _did_ mean it the way it sounded, and in that case, he wasn’t quite prepared to have that conversation at the moment. Instead he let his eyes drift closed, and as he dozed off again he realized a large, strong hand was steadily working up and down his body from the back of his skull to the small of his back, surprisingly adept at finding the painful knots in his muscles and smoothing them away. The contact was calming in a way he didn’t really want to admit, but he was too relaxed to worry about it. His last thought before he fell asleep again was that the next voice he would hear would probably be Natasha’s, and she would be bitching at Thor for not coming to get the rest of them. The thought made him smile, and he heard Thor chuckle.

“It’s good to see you smile, Little Hawk.”

“Yeah, well… if you take enough anti-anxiety medication, you’ll be smiling too. But you’re always smiling.”

“Not always,” Thor said absently.

 

 

 

“Why the fuck would you not tell us he was passed out on the floor?”

Clint almost laughed, although the light was too bright to open his eyes just yet. “Hi, Natasha.”

“You fucking idiot…”

“Good to see you too.”

“And you…” she snapped, turning on Thor again, “don’t you have any sense? He could have been really sick. He _is_ sick. Why would you just…”

“Because he did not wish everyone to be called upon, and…”

“This is _not_ what we discussed, Thor,” she said sharply.

“But Stark said…”

“I thought part of what we discussed was not listening to anything Stark says.”

Thor sounded slightly confused. “Yes, but Stark told me the same thing about you.”

“Fucking cocksucking son of a bitch…”

“Watch your language in front of the Asgardian deity, Nat,” Clint managed.

Thor shrugged. “In my understanding, both fucking and cock-sucking are highly enjoyable activities, and as far as Stark’s parenthood, I’m fairly certain that…”

“Oh, fuck,” Clint gasped, and buried his face in the pillow to silence his laughter before Natasha decided to silence it for him.

“It’s a figure of speech,” Natasha said. “Look, we said we were going do this as a team.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Thor said contritely. “I apologize for failing to follow the instructions.”

“Good,” she said. Then there was a moment of silence; Natasha apparently hadn’t been expecting him to concede so easily.

“He can stay here for now,” Thor said. “I’ll look after him.”

“Fine. But no more pills,” she said. “You hear that, JARVIS? You are not to dispense any more pills to Agent Barton. I don’t care if it’s fucking aspirin. Nothing. Got it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” JARVIS responded. “I received the same orders from Mr. Stark. Is this a problem?”

“Why would that be a problem?”

“Well, ma’am, this is the first time you and Mr. Stark have ever given me orders that were not in direct conflict with each other. I wasn’t sure if this was a breach of protocol.”

“JARVIS, are you making a joke?”

“No, ma’am. It’s not in my programming.”

“The fuck it isn’t,” she muttered. “I’m serious. No pills.”

“How am I supposed to sleep?” Clint demanded, feeling panic crawl into his chest.

Natasha’s voice softened, but only slightly. “One of us will stay with you.”

“That might be scarier than the nightmares, depending on who…”

“I’m serious, Clint,” she said, and he jumped at the feeling of her hand on his cheek. Natasha broke people; she didn’t _touch_ people. “When you wake up, Thor is going to make sure you get back to your room, and someone’s going to bring you something to eat, and you _are_ going to eat it, and one of us will stay with you.”

“I don’t need a fucking babysitter,” he muttered.

“Really? Try that on a day that we _didn’t_ find you passed out on the floor, Clint.”

The door slammed behind her. Thor exhaled slowly.

“She is also a most formidable adversary.”

“Thor…”

“Yes?”

“You have no idea.”

 

 

 

The light outside Thor’s windows told Clint it was late afternoon, edging toward evening. He rubbed his face and rolled over, finding Thor still stretched out in his chair, apparently asleep. As soon as Clint moved, though, the blue eyes flew open and the bright smile spread across his face.

“Good morning… evening… whatever time suits you.”

Clint opened his mouth to answer, but it seemed to be glued together. Thor, amused, rose and returned a moment later with a glass of water, which Clint had finished almost before it was handed to him. Thor went off and got him another one, and a third one.

“Thanks.”

“You are most welcome. Are you feeling well enough to return to your room?”

Clint stretched his legs gingerly. “Yeah.”

“Not that I would not like to keep you here…”

Clint glanced at his friend suspiciously, but Thor’s smile was still all cheerful, good-natured friendliness. Of course, it was hard to tell what friendliness might include if you were in Asgard.

“But I’ve been given orders to have JARVIS notify the team when you awaken and to return you to your room.”

“I understand.”

He swung his feet to the floor and stood up with some caution.

“I’ll escort you… just in case you should have trouble.”

“I expect the trouble’s probably waiting in my room for me,” Clint said. “But yeah… I wouldn’t mind the company.”

Clint left Thor at the elevator and made his way down the hall toward his room. He wasn’t surprised that the door was open, and that the two voices inside hadn’t stopped their discussion long enough to be aware of his arrival.

“… Chinese take-out?” Natasha was saying. “I thought someone was going to cook something… decent.”

“They were,” Tony said. “But people have been cooking decent things since you and Clint moved in here, and he’s barely touched any of it, but the other day when we got Chinese take-out, I think he ate more of it than Thor, so I thought maybe he’d actually want some.”

“Oh,” Natasha said. “I wasn’t here.”

“You were in a conference call with Fury and some Russian guys. And there would have been leftovers, except that…”

“Yeah, between Steve’s appetite and Thor’s, we don’t really do leftovers around here, do we,” she agreed. Then, after a moment, “Thanks for getting that for him.”

“Well, there’s enough for all three of us. Even three sets of chopsticks. You know, I heard you can kill a man with chopsticks.”

Natasha sighed. “Damnit, Stark…”

“It was a joke.”

“It’s not funny. I’m not really finding anything funny at the moment. It’s not going to take long for Fury to catch on to what kind of shape Clint is in, and they’re going to haul him off and pretty much break him and ‘reprogram’ him or whatever they’re calling it now…”

“Fury’s not going to catch on to anything,” Tony said.

“What about when he sees the videos from today and Clint in the shooting range and…”

“Hmm,” Tony said. “This Mongolian beef smells good. There’s no videos of Clint at the shooting range today. Is there, JARVIS?”

“No, sir, since I was ordered to erase them.”

“Stark… you do know Fury has a secret override on that, don’t you?”

Tony laughed. “I have an override on his override. JARVIS is my system, not Fury’s. I knew the minute he tried having his incompetent lackeys hack into it, and I let them think they’d managed to successfully override my control of the system, but it’s bullshit. If Fury does try to activate the override, all he’ll see is… oh, what did I program, JARVIS?”

“Seventeen hours of old “Star Trek” episodes, sir. On a repeating loop. I believe he will have to shut down whatever server he’s using to access the program just to make it stop.”

Natasha snorted. “Fury will have your ass on a stick.”

“No, he won’t. Besides, it’s none of his damn business what goes on here. This isn’t a military base. This is my home. It’s your home too, and Clint’s, and the others too, and Fury doesn’t need to know what people are doing in their own home.”

“But you do,” Natasha observed.

“JARVIS watches everything that happens here. That doesn’t mean I do. I don’t particularly care what’s going on unless it involves my lab, access in and out of the building, or Thor turning on anything in the kitchen.”

“I have to admit, those would probably be my three main areas of concern too,” Natasha said. “That does smell good, actually.”

Clint stepped around the corner and found the two of them leaning over a large tray of Chinese take-out containers on his table. Both of them looked up at him.

“Wonton soup?” he asked.

Tony pointed to one of the containers. “Right there. Sit down. I’m sitting down. Agent Romanov is sitting down. Right?”

“I am,” she said, pulling out a chair and settling into it.

Tony grinned and sat down. “Perfect. Nice dinner for three. Am I the third wheel here, or…”

“Stark…” Natasha warned.

“It was another joke,” Tony said.

“It wasn’t a very good one,” Clint said, reaching for the soup. “Your AI is funnier than you are.”

“Excuse me!” Tony protested. “JARVIS doesn’t even have programming for humor. Do you, JARVIS?”

“Of course not, sir. I have no sense of humor whatsoever. Enjoy your dinner.”

With Natasha’s sharp eyes on him, Clint forced himself to eat, and once he started, he realized he was hungrier than he’d thought. Before he knew it, his plate was filled, then empty, and then filled again.

“This is good,” he said.

Natasha gave Tony the slightest hint of a smile. “Good.”

They ate for a few more minutes in silence before Tony stood up. “Are you two coming downstairs? It’s Bruce’s turn to pick the movie for tonight and I can’t promise it’ll be something good, but Steve told Thor he’d teach him to make popcorn, so that ought to be amusing if nothing else.”

Clint shrugged, suspecting he didn’t really have a choice in the matter. If he insisted on staying here, one or both of them would just insist on staying with him.

“Fine. But has anyone taught Steve or Thor about microwave popcorn?”

“What kind of fun would that be?” Tony asked, looking genuinely puzzled.

“It’s not fun if nothing catches on fire,” Natasha said, rolling her eyes, but Clint knew her well enough to read in the fluid motion as she rose that the fuse on her anger had been extinguished for the moment.

They rode down to the living room in the elevator together and stepped out to find Bruce and Steve debating something about old movies while Thor sat on the couch with his feet propped on the coffee table, watching the discussion with amusement.

“What’s the problem?” Tony asked.

Bruce pointed at Steve. “I said something about _Real Genius_ being an old movie and he got all pissed.”

“I did not. I just said that if you were going to call it an old movie, it should at least be in black and white, or…”

Tony slapped his forehead. “Get over it. Both of you. Seriously. _Real Genius_ , Banner?”

“It’s my turn to pick. I wanted a science movie. And I thought, considering the whole popcorn thing…”

“Fine. JARVIS, put the movie on.”

They arranged themselves on the big sectional sofa with only minor elbowing and complaining about someone else taking up too much room. Of course, as soon as everyone had gotten settled, Thor demanded that Steve follow up on his promise to show him how to make popcorn, and the pair wandered into the kitchen. Tony sighed.

“JARVIS, is there a fire extinguisher in the kitchen?”

“There are four of them, sir.”

“Good. Turn off the automatic sprinkler system… actually, leave it on in the kitchen. But turn it off in here. And dim the lights to 30%.”

Clint wasn’t really interested in watching the movie; he was pretty sure he’d seen it before, and his brain didn’t really want to try to focus on anything in particular, so he leaned back and closed his eyes, listening to the voices from the speakers and Thor’s voice booming from the kitchen, since apparently JARVIS was not capable of turning down the volume on Thor. After a while there was a bowl of popcorn plopped in his lap, which he looked down at with some surprise.

“Popcorn for my friend the Hawk!” Thor declared.

“Where’s my popcorn?” Tony protested.

Steve shrugged. “We made three bowls. You can share.”

“Fine,” Tony said, “but not with Fabio and the Captain and their bottomless pits for stomachs.”

He slid closer to Clint and grabbed a handful of popcorn.

“At least I know you won’t inhale the entire bowl in fifteen seconds,” he said.

Clint shrugged. “Not likely. I’m still full from dinner.”

“I don’t think those two know what ‘full’ means,” Tony said, leaning toward Clint and speaking in a conspiratorial tone despite knowing that both of the individuals in question had better hearing than any normal human.

“That entirely depends on what you’re talking about being full of,” Thor observed, raising an eyebrow.

“I’m  going to decide I’m not curious about that comment,” Tony said, and returned to eating popcorn. Natasha muffled a chuckle and grabbed a handful of popcorn out of the bowl Steve was holding in his lap. Steve jumped.

“Not used to a lady’s hand in your crotch, Cap’n?” Bruce asked mildly.

Steve’s face turned that shade of red Tony was still trying to come up with the perfect name for.

“I don’t care whose hand is in my popcorn, but they could at least ask first.””

Bruce coughed and glanced at Tony. “He doesn’t care whose hands are in his popcorn, as long as they ask first.”

“Well, ask him, and maybe he’ll let you put your hands in his popcorn,” Tony suggested.

“Maybe I don’t want his popcorn,” Bruce said.

Natasha swung a pillow and connected it with the back of Tony’s head. He jumped and glared at her.

“Why’d you hit me? He said it!”

“It was a pre-emptive strike. Whatever you were about to say was worse,” she said.

“Now, you can’t assume… well, actually, you’re right. But…”

Thor frowned. “Is ‘popcorn’ yet another euphemism for the male sexual organs?”

Steve nearly choked. Natasha rolled her eyes.

“Only if you’re talking to ten-year-old boys. Or adult men who have spent so much time locked up in their labs playing with robots that they never matured past the age of ten.”

“That’s not fair,” Tony argued. “My crude and inappropriate sexual remarks are at least at a thirteen-year-old level.”

Clint half-dozed and half-listened and served as a platform for the bowl of popcorn that Tony was steadily emptying. Eventually, someone had a hand on his shoulder and was shaking him.

“Hey, there, Clint. Wake up. We’re all headed off to bed.”

Clint opened his eyes and blinked up at Tony. “Oh. All right.”

Natasha glanced at Steve and Bruce and Thor, who were arguing about something at the other end of the room.

“Who do you want to stay with you tonight?”

He scowled. “I don’t need anybody to stay with me tonight.”

“You’re not getting any sleeping pills,” Tony said, shrugging. “So you might want some company.”

“This isn’t optional, is it?” he asked.

Natasha shook her head. “No. Besides, you’re the only one with a bed and a hammock, so you even have extra sleeping space. Who do you want to stay with you tonight?”

Shit, Clint thought. Tony and his inability to keep his mouth shut. Banner’s dry sarcasm. Steve... well, just being Captain America like he always was. Natasha being the highly-tuned, hyper-alert one who would have no problem sitting awake all night, watching him for any sign of stress. And Thor… well, besides being loud and having made some comments about liking Clint in his bed that might or might not have been something to wonder about, Clint couldn’t think of any reason he couldn’t deal with him tonight.

“Thor?” Natasha said, raising her eyebrows. “He’s not exactly…”

“No, but he’ll leave me alone and let me sleep,” Clint said.

Tony glanced at Natasha. “And really, Thor probably knows better than the rest of us about what…”

Clint sighed. “You’re allowed to say ‘Loki’, you know. As far as I know, he doesn’t appear if you say his name three times.”

Natasha shrugged. “All right, then.”

Clint met her eyes and read the hurt she would have been able to hide from anyone but him. Tony had drifted away toward the others, and he raised a hand to touch her arm.

“You’re too good at keeping an eye on things, Nat,” he said. “It’s a little… intense.”

She nodded slowly. “Yeah. I’ve been told I’m a little intense. I understand. But you know where I am if you need me.”

“I always do,” he said.

That drew a hint of a smile from her.

“Goodnight. Have fun with Thor.”

“I don’t intend to have fun. I intend to go to sleep.”

“What kind of fun are you having with Thor?” Tony asked, swinging back around. “Because, if you must know, I’m extremely interested in some things about Asgardian physiology and…”

“No.”

“Well, I’m just saying…”

“No.”

“Not even for science?”

“Especially not for science,” Clint said, shaking his head.

Tony shrugged. “Suit yourself. Science is a very good cause, you know. I mean…”

“Then _you_ fuck him and collect your data,” Natasha suggested.

Tony glanced at Thor. “He’s… umm… not exactly my type.”

Natasha laughed. “Don’t even pretend you don’t look at other men, Stark. I’ve seen you do it more times than you can count.”

“I didn’t say that,” Tony argued. “I said he wasn’t my type. And by that, I mean the type that isn’t possibly going to accidentally break me in half. He’s all yours, Clint.”

“Damnit, Stark…” Clint muttered.

Tony grinned. “Sweet dreams. And don’t think you’re safe in your hammock, either… Thor can fly, remember?”

“Would you fuck off?”

Tony saluted him. “Yes, Agent Barton. Fucking off as ordered.”

He marched away, shouting something to Bruce about the things people were not willing to do in the name of science.

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor offers some comfort, Tony tries to explain male strippers, and things Clint's been avoiding catch up with him in a bad way.

Clint decided to depart while the others were distracted, and he had made it back to his room, up the rope ladder, and into his hammock when there was a knock at the door.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

“Sir, am I to assume that means I should open the door?” JARVIS asked.

“Might as well. He can bust it down anyway.”

The door opened, letting in a flash of light from the hallway, and then slid closed. Thor’s tread was surprisingly light for such a big man.

“Hello, Hawk! Are you up there in your nest?”

“Yup.”

“Excellent. Sleep well, then! I shall make myself comfortable in the bed here. Wake me if you wish for some company!”

Clint rolled over and tried not to yawn. He’d thought that after a long nap earlier and half-dozing on the sofa, he might be able to stay awake all night, but he was quickly realizing that wasn’t very likely. He managed to fight off sleep for a while, but when Thor dozed off and his breathing fell into a deep, slow rhythm punctuated by the occasional snore, Clint found it more than he could resist, and his eyes drifted closed.

He knew perfectly well he would wake up paralyzed and gripped by overwhelming, nameless terror, his blankets sticking to the cold sweat that covered his skin, his muscles twisted and locked. Knowing it was going to happen didn’t do much to ease the crushing panic in his chest, and the feeling that his lungs wouldn’t pull in any air.

He must have made some sort of sound, though, because after a moment there was a loud thud next to his hammock, and then big hands were pulling his blankets away, hot against his ice-cold skin, and shaking him.

“Clint! Friend!”

The grip of the paralysis was suddenly released, and he gasped, grasping blindly and finding a strong arm across his chest and grabbing onto it tightly. It wasn’t until his breathing evened out that he realized he was wide awake and shaking and that Thor was hauling him out of his hammock. There was a moment of dizzying sensation, and then the god’s feet hit the floor and he rolled Clint onto the bed and flopped down next to him.

“Are you ill? Do you need help?”

“No,” Clint managed. The terror was being rapidly replaced by embarrassment. “Just… nightmares. It’s fine. Let me go back to bed, and…”

“You should stay here,” Thor said firmly, hooking one arm over him and frowning down at him. “You don’t look well. You’re pale. And you’re shaking.”

“I’m just cold.”

“I can ask JARVIS to warm the room.”

“That won’t help,” Clint said, rubbing his arms to try to get some heat back into his skin.

Thor grasped his hands and pulled them away and tucked himself against Clint’s back, pulling him close and rubbing his arms and shoulders and chest with brisk strokes that quickly brought warmth flowing back to the icy skin. And as his breathing finally returned to something like normal and his pulse stopped pounding in his ears, he realized that while he slept wearing a t-shirt and boxers, Thor apparently slept wearing absolutely nothing. He flushed and tried to pull away.

“Stop squirming, Little Hawk.”

“You don’t have any damn clothes on,” he muttered.

“I hardly see how that matters at the moment,” Thor said, continuing to rub warmth back into his still-shaking body. “Rest and calm down. Unless, of course, you think I lack the self-control to behave myself appropriately in bed with you.”

Clint heard the chuckle in his voice and relaxed slightly. “I wouldn’t bet on anyone in this entire place having any ability to behave appropriately.”

“True,” Thor agreed, “but I shall keep my inappropriate behavior to myself unless I have indication that it is desired.”

Fuck, Clint thought. He was pretty sure he wasn’t thinking very clearly at the moment, but he knew he had been very cold, and that he was currently in someone else’s arms that were very warm, and that the body pressed against his own didn’t feel at all unpleasant.

“Go back to sleep, friend,” Thor said, his voice low and quiet.

Clint noticed absently that Thor’s arm made a nice, warm pillow. The adrenaline draining out of his muscles left them shaky and tired, and as he started to doze, he was fairly certain he felt the tickle and scratch of the full beard as Thor pressed a few lazy kisses against his shoulders and the back of his neck. He realized he should probably object to this, but he didn’t. It had been a long time since anyone had held him or touched him…

Ice shot through his spine, and he shuddered. Something in his head was warning him that it _hadn’t_ been that long; it hadn’t been very long at all, and he tried very hard not to think about whose arms, whose hands had been on him…

“Clint,” Thor muttered, squeezing him tightly enough to force the air out of his lungs and the unwelcome thoughts out of his head. “Rest.”

He did.

 

 

It appeared that no one had been persuaded to make breakfast that morning, because when Clint wandered into the kitchen, the only ones he found were Bruce and Tony, sitting at the counter eating cereal, Bruce out of a bowl with a spoon and Tony out of the box with his hand.

“You know, other people eat that cereal,” Clint said.

Tony shrugged. “I washed my hands.”

“You did not,” Bruce said.

“I didn’t say I _just_ washed them,” Tony said. “Besides, who else here eats Choco-Pops?”

“Well, I do,” Clint said. “At least, I used to.”

Bruce shrugged. “Seems like people having their hands in other people’s stuff is becoming par for the course around here. Although since I’ve met Tony, I don’t seem to recall a time he _didn’t_ have his hands in someone else’s stuff…”

“I don’t know if I like what you’re implying,” Tony said, not sounding terribly concerned.

“I’m implying that if you were in Kindergarten you’d be in time-out every fifteen minutes for not being able to keep your hands to yourself,” Bruce said.

“Good thing I’m not in Kindergarten,” Tony shrugged. “Besides, you’re not usually complaining.”

That managed to throw of Bruce’s composure just long enough for Tony to flick a piece of cereal and hit him in the ear with it. Bruce scowled.

“The Other Guy will crunch you like cereal.”

“The Other Guy likes me,” Tony said.

“Well, I’d rather not have him popping up, because I’m pretty sure he doesn’t like me much,” Clint said.

Bruce looked slightly guilty. “Look, it’s not like I can explain to him about mind control or anything like that. He knows some of what I know, but he doesn’t understand all of it… and he doesn’t care about most of it. Besides, he didn’t hurt you last time he was out.”

“There were lots of other things to hurt,” Clint said. “And he was doing a pretty good job of it, if I recall.”

“Besides, I’m pretty sure if he does show up again, it’s Thor he’ll be after,” Bruce said.

“Is he still pissed off at Thor?”

“Not really. But I think he thought the whole fight with the hammer and all was a hell of a lot of fun and he seems to think they ought to do it again.”

“I’m not rebuilding this place a second time just because Mr. Chippendale and the Green Guy want to roll around on the floor together and throw mythical weapons at each other,” Tony protested.

“You’re no fun,” Bruce sighed.

“What is a Chippendale?” Thor asked, strolling into the kitchen with his usual impeccable timing. Clint forced down the flush that was starting at the back of his neck; it had been broad daylight when he’d awakened and Thor had been long gone, but that didn’t mean a certain part of his brain wasn’t replaying bits of the night before.

“A Chippendale is a male stripper,” Tony said, and of course had to grab his ever-present tablet and pull up an article about Chippendale dancers to show to Thor, who grinned.

“Aha! Are they recruiting?”

Bruce nearly spit out his cereal. “I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t say no to a god.”

“You can’t be an Avenger and a stripper,” Clint said.

“Why not?” Natasha asked, having just arrived. “I’ve stripped before more than enough times when I was undercover. It’s kind of fun… probably would have been more fun if I hadn’t been watching for anyone in the audience with a weapon, but it’s still kind of fun.”

Thor raised his eyebrows. “I see. Was Agent Barton also expected to strip while working undercover?”

Clint coughed, and Bruce dropped his spoon trying not to laugh.

“Umm… no.”

“Why not?” Thor asked.

“Yeah, Clint, why not?” Bruce asked.

Tony elbowed him. “If you want him to strip for you, maybe you should ask.”

Bruce scowled at him. “Why do you think that I want to see everyone here naked just because you do?”

It was Tony’s turn to cough, and Natasha’s turn to laugh, and Thor’s turn to look puzzled.

“Are men not supposed to see each other naked?” he asked. “It would seem odd, since all men are…”

“First of all, not all men look like gods with their clothes off,” Bruce snapped, giving Tony a sharp look.

“And yes,” Natasha added. “There are cultural reasons why some men are uncomfortable being naked around other men.”

“But there are male strippers.”

“Yes.”

“Wait a minute,” Tony said. “I want to go back to the part where Agent Romanov was a stripper.”

She grinned smugly. “Unless I’m ever deep undercover and you happen to be the owner of an extremely exclusive gentleman’s club that serves as a cover for running weapons and Russian insurgence intelligence, it’s not likely you’re ever going to see it.”

Tony shrugged. “A man can dream.”

“A man can keep right on dreaming,” she said. “Grab a granola bar and a bottle of water or something, Clint. We’re going down to the gym for a little while.”

“I would be happy to join you in the gym,” Thor offered cheerfully.

“I think Natasha would like to have some private practice time with Clint,” Tony said.

“Oh,” Thor said, looking disappointed.

“Don’t worry, Thor,” Bruce added. “I don’t think it’s that kind of private time.”

Natasha rolled her eyes and motioned Clint toward the refrigerator. “Get something to eat.”

“You don’t have sexual relations with him?” Thor asked her, glancing at Clint and seeming somewhat surprised.

“No, I do not,” she said briskly.

“Why not?”

“That’s not an appropriate question.”

“I think it’s an entirely appropriate question,” Tony said.

“You and ‘appropriate’ have never even been on the same street.”

“We’ve at least been introduced,” Tony protested. “We just didn’t hit it off.”

Clint grabbed a bottle of water and an apple from the fridge and followed Natasha to the elevator, watching with some wariness to see how annoyed she was. To his surprise, she was smiling as the doors slid closed.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“I don’t know. It’s a weird feeling, not having to be constantly waiting for the knife in your back, you know? I guess I… sort of almost feel safe here. Which I shouldn’t, because Stark’s probably just got us all under a microscope for S.H.I.E.L.D., but…”

“I don’t think he does,” Clint said.

Natasha shook her head. “I don’t think he does either. That’s the thing. I think we’re actually further out of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s view here, right under their noses, than we would be if we tried to disappear.”

“There’s one thing Tony has in common with both of us,” Clint said. “He’s a professional at letting people think they’re getting what they want, and letting them see what they want to see, and not really giving them shit.”

The elevator door slid quietly open at the gym, and the lights obligingly flashed on. Natasha motioned to one of the benches.

“Have a seat.”

He sat down beside her and took a bite of his apple. “Are we having another serious discussion?”

“I just wanted to talk to you without Bruce and Tony and then Thor of all people up our asses. Hell… who exactly started the talk about male strippers?”

“One guess.”

“Yeah. Anyway… and what were you guys talking about that Thor assumes we’re sleeping together?”

“I think Thor thinks everyone should be sleeping together. Maybe that’s how they do things in Asgard. He knows you and I have known each other a long time, and we trust each other, and we’re closer than any other two people here…”

“I don’t know. I think Bruce and Tony are getting pretty close.”

“I think they’re both completely oblivious to it, too,” Clint said.

“I don’t know about that,” she said. “But I was talking about us.”

He nodded. “Yeah. I know. Look, there was a time when we were both…”

“Clint, you know I love you. But I’m not… I don’t want it to be that way. You know my training. You know I don’t… sex is a tool. I’ve been trained that way since before most girls even know how to flirt. I don’t sleep with men I love. I sleep with men I’m supposed to kill, or men who have something I’m supposed to take, or men who know something I need them to tell me. I don’t want…”

Clint sighed and hooked an arm around her shoulder, and she slumped against him.

“I know. Look, if things were that way between us, I’d always wonder if… you know. What was really going through your head. As it stands now, I’d trust you with my life… and I don’t want that to change.”

She smiled and kissed his cheek. “Thank you.”

“I have to say, you’d be a lot harder to resist if women were really my…”

“I know,” she said, and giggled.

“What’s so funny?” he demanded, defensive.

“I’m just laughing because we’re in a house with four men and one woman, and the professional seductress is the _only_ one you don’t have to worry about trying to get into your pants.”

“Yeah, well… wait a minute.”

She laughed and stood up, taking an absent side-kick at one of the punching bags. “You heard me.”

“Umm… I don’t know what the hell Thor wants. And Tony seems to want into _everyone’s_ pants… or else he just makes people think he does. But Captain Boy Scout doesn’t even seem to know people have anything in their pants he could do stuff with, much less wanting into another man’s pants, and Bruce…”

“Is Bruce,” Natasha said. “If you’ve got him figured out, explain him to me, because I don’t.”

“So, did you bring me down here to talk or to practice?”

“Both,” she said, pulling him to his feet. “Come on. We’ll see if we can break one of Steve’s specially designed punching bags.”

 

 

Natasha had been right about one thing, at least: a good solid hour of violently abusing a punching bag did help clear his head, and at least feeling physically worn out was better than feeling like a walking ball of nerves. He’d probably been a little too focused on abusing the punching bag, though, and not on how long or how hard he’d been doing it, because by the time Natasha suggested he back off, his arms and shoulders were painfully sore, and the ache was starting to crawl down his back. He rubbed his shoulder ruefully and gave Natasha his best pleading look.

“Were you serious when you told JARVIS I couldn’t even have aspirin?”

She relented. “I guess I probably didn’t have the authority to order that anyway.”

“Good. Because I need some. And a shower.”

His room was empty; he wasn’t sure why he’d half-expected some random person to be waiting there for him. He tossed his clothes on the chair and stepped into the bathroom, thinking that after a while living in Stark Tower was going to spoil all of them; he wasn’t sure where else they were going to get massive glass-walled showers with multiple shower heads and an adjustable cascade that could go from a violent pounding to a gentle drizzle with the touch of a button. He set the water pressure on full blast, turned the heat up enough to fog the glass almost instantly, and leaned his forehead against the tile wall, letting the water beat on his sore muscles. He’d been lazy, apparently, being this sore after a decent workout.

 

 

He had no idea how it all suddenly changed, but abruptly he wasn’t in the big, luxurious shower in his room. He was in a small, cramped box of a shower in a dark corner, and the water pouring over him had turned ice-cold, and for a moment he was completely lost, struggling to place this fragment of memory.

“This location is far from satisfactory.”

Fuck. That voice sent the memory lurching through his head to click into place with the other pieces he didn’t want to think about.

“Look,” he heard himself answer, “I told you, we had to get underground, at least for the night. They’ll be out there scanning with everything they’ve got, and we’re actually easier to track at night. In daylight we can switch vehicles and mix in with civilian traffic.”

“Very well, my Hawk,” Loki said. “Your tactical knowledge has been of value so far. I am pleased.”

Clint watched himself reach out to turn off the shower. “Everything that came out of the base needs to be decontaminated. Including us. They’ll be tracking the Tesseract’s gamma rays and they don’t need us to help them out by carrying around residual radioactivity for them to follow.”

He stepped out of the shower, looking around for something to dry off with, but all he saw was the inside of the dark, abandoned bunker where they’d taken refuge, with his clothes still hanging up to dry over the back of a chair. Loki studied him curiously, and Clint waited for his orders.

“You’re shivering.”

“Yeah. It’s a little chilly in here. Running water, yeah. Hot water, no.”

Loki reached out and touched his arm with some interest, intrigued by the hairs standing on end with the chill. Clint shivered at the contact; Loki’s fingers were colder than the water had been.

“I find this lurking underground tedious,” he said.

“You ordered me to protect the Tesseract, not amuse you,” Clint said. There was no humor in his tone, just a statement of fact.

“True,” Loki said. “But if I ordered you to amuse me now, you would have little choice in the matter.”

“I don’t see how me entertaining you improves our position,” Clint answered. “You’re smart. Make better use of your resources. You have less useful toys to play with if you’re bored.”

“Yes,” Loki said, his eyes moving over the archer’s naked form. “But none are as desirable.”

The chill that ran over Clint’s skin was not from the cold. Orders were orders. They were not to be disobeyed. But this didn’t have anything to do with the task at hand. This was… it was something that his mind, even under Loki’s control, squirmed at and resisted.

“But it does have to do with the task at hand,” Loki said, watching the thoughts run through his prize acquisition’s head. “I must know how willing you are to follow my orders.”

Clint shifted uneasily. “What is my order?”

“Turn around,” Loki said smoothly. “Put your hands on the table.”

Orders were orders. And even as something in his head recoiled and protested, it didn’t matter. He didn’t have to like his orders. He just had to follow them.

 

 

Apparently JARVIS was programmed to shut off the showers if they had been running for a length of time with no motion detected; it was a reasonable idea, considering that it didn’t always occur to Thor, for example, that one was supposed to shut them off, or that Tony’s head was often so full of what he’d been interrupted from to go take a shower that he would rush back to the lab without thinking he’d left the water running. The motion sensors did not detect the figure huddled in the corner of the shower, since besides shaking it had not moved in some time, and when JARVIS inquired whether he should leave the water running, he received no answer, so he followed protocol and shut it off.

 

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony to the rescue (awkwardly), a discussion, and some smut (finally).

“What did you call me up here for, JARVIS?” Tony demanded, as he walked into Clint’s room. “He’s not even here.”

“He is here, sir. He’s in the shower.”

“Then why isn’t the shower running?”

“Because he didn’t activate the motion detectors for over half an hour.”

Tony’s head snapped up. “He’s been sitting in there and not moving for more than half an hour?”

“Yes, sir. That’s why I called you up here. You asked…”

“I know, I know.”

He pushed open the bathroom door and slid the glass door of the shower open. The heat from the water had long since dissipated, and he found Clint sitting in the far corner of the shower, his back against the wall, knees pulled up to his chest and head lowered with arms locked behind it as if to protect from blows.

“Clint! Hey! Wake up!”

That didn’t work, but Tony hadn’t really expected it to. His shoes squeaked on the wet tile as he stepped into the shower and grabbed Clint’s arm, but it refused to budge, and his skin was so cold that Tony jerked his hand back.

“What the fuck! JARVIS, why is he so cold?”

“I don’t know, sir. Thermal imaging scan shows his external body temperature to be noticeably below normal, but not low enough to be indicative of hypothermia…”

“Who’s closest to here right now?”

“Captain Rogers, sir.”

“Get him up here, right now.”

 

 

 

Steve must not have been far away, or he was used to responding quickly to orders, because even to Tony’s impatient mind it was only a minute or two before he arrived.

“Where are you?”

“In the bathroom. Get in here. I need your help.”

Steve might have been annoyed by the demand in Tony’s voice if he hadn’t stepped through the door and found Tony attempting unsuccessfully to pry Clint out of the corner.

“Give me a hand here,” he said, out of breath. “The guy’s solid muscle, and he’s soaking wet, and he’s not exactly cooperating.”

“Right,” Steve said. “Don’t want to hurt him, though.”

“He’s fucking freezing. Just get him out of here so we can warm him up.”

Steve shrugged and quickly managed to half-unfold Clint and haul him out of the shower. Tony jerked his head toward the bed.

“Put him down there. And look in the closet… there should be an electric blanket in there. They’re supposed to be in all the rooms.”

“Electric blanket?”

“It’s a blanket with a power cord sticking out of it. Just find it.”

Steve began rummaging through the closet, his efforts hindered by the large number of sharply pointed objects, mostly arrows, that Clint seemed to have stashed there. Tony retrieved an armful of towels and started rubbing at the dripping wet dark blond hair.

“Hey, Clint! Hello! Talking to you, here! You could at least answer!”

Steve dropped the electric blanket on the bed and grabbed a towel. “Why is he so cold? It’s not that cold in this room.”

“Hell if I know,” Tony muttered.

“Well, Loki’s not really Thor’s brother… isn’t he really some kind of frost giant or something?”

“So I hear,” Tony said, plugging the electric blanket in. “These things are great on cold nights, by the way. What were you saying? I thought they got Loki out of his head.”

“They got him out of Loki’s control,” Steve said, glancing up at Tony. “Don’t you have things in your head that still mess with you?”

“More than you want to know,” Tony said, shaking his head. “This thing needs to heat up faster.”

Clint could hear the discussion going back and forth over him, and could feel strong hands rubbing at his chilled skin with towels. He wanted to tell them he was fine, and to just leave him alone, but since he couldn’t manage to get his body to respond to his brain’s commands, he figured that he probably wasn’t fine.

“JARVIS,” Tony barked. “Thermal imaging scan shows what?”

“External body temperature slightly closer to normal, sir.”

“Well, now what do we do with him?” he demanded.

“I’m a computer, sir, not a doctor.”

Tony muttered some very unflattering comments, and Steve grinned.

“You programmed it.”

“I didn’t program him to be an asshole. Bruce probably hacked him or something.”

Steve sat back and studied Clint. “He’s not as locked up as he was.”

Tony frowned and looked down at himself. “Yeah. And you’re soaking wet, and I’m soaking wet. I think the electric blanket will warm him up. Go put on some dry clothes, and then go up to the kitchen and make something hot… tea or something. Probably doesn’t need a strong cup of coffee at the moment… find some of those stupid herbal teas Bruce is always messing with.”

If Steve objected to taking orders from Tony, he didn’t say anything about it at the moment. As he left, Tony frowned at his own wet clothes.

“Can’t say I approve of this. Not leaving you alone, though… whether you’re listening or not.”

He rummaged in Clint’s drawer and found a pair of sweatpants to pull on, tossing his clothes in the corner and leaving the blue glow of the arc reactor casting shadows across the walls.

“Right. Better.”

He climbed onto the bed and attempted to roll Clint up in the heated blanket.

“You know, this would be easier if you weren’t tied up like a sailor’s knot.”

“Sorry,” Clint murmured.

“Hey!” Tony exclaimed, grinning. “You’re back.”

“Yeah.”

The answer was low, and Clint’s jaw was clenched. Tony frowned. “You okay, Clint?”

“Nope.”

“Yeah. Didn’t think so.”

He laid a hand on the other man’s shoulder; his skin still felt alarmingly cold.

“Are you all here, Clint?”

Clint shook his head slightly.

“Okay. Still somewhere else?”

A hint of a nod.

“Well, shit,” Tony muttered. He grabbed the electric blanket and laid down on the bed, pulling it over both of them and letting the heat seep into them as he set about slowly untangling Clint’s limbs and straightening him out so more of the warmth could reach him. He became steadily more pliant under Tony’s hands, and Tony was uneasily aware that it seemed to have more to do with the physical contact than the heat. Eventually Tony managed to unfold him into what seemed like a reasonable position and tucked the blanket up to his chin.

“That’s better. Do you want me to go sit over in the chair?”

For a moment there was no answer, and he thought Clint had gone away again, but then he shook his head.

“No? You want me to stay here?”

“Please.”

The word was a whisper, but it twisted Tony’s gut. He tucked himself down under the blanket and wrapped an arm around the other man, pulling him against him.

“I’m not going anywhere. Promise. Well, not till you tell me to go away. Okay?”

“Yeah.”

“JARVIS? Thermal imaging scan?”

“Thermal imaging scan shows a large, blanket-shaped area of heat in the vicinity of Agent Barton’s bed, sir.”

“Fucking AI,” Tony muttered. “Bruce did hack you, didn’t he?”

“No, sir. I am simply responding to the programming you created.”

“Well, apparently I’m an asshole, then.”

“Sometimes.”

Tony raised an eyebrow; the murmured response was from Clint.

“I’m only an asshole sometimes?”

“Not as much as you’d like us to think you are.”

Tony chuckled and rubbed Clint’s shoulder. “Huh. Well, everyone knows I’m an asshole, so if you think I’m only pretending to be one, you must still be delusional. But at least you’re talking. You feel like telling me how you ended up like this?”

“Not really.”

“Okay, okay. Just asking.”

“Maybe later.”

He stifled a yawn, and Tony realized that the tension gradually unlocking out of his body was giving way to a complete, unresisting exhaustion.

“Hey… don’t go to sleep yet,” Tony said. “I don’t want you going back wherever you were.”

Clint shook his head and mumbled something incoherent.

“What?”

“Said… not as long as you stay.”

Before Tony could respond to this, Clint had rolled toward him, buried his head against Tony’s chest with the arc reactor glowing against his cheek, and wrapped an arm around his waist with a shaky but determined grasp; apparently Tony wasn’t going anywhere if Clint could help it. Which wasn’t really fair, because it wasn’t fair to have somebody like Clint curled up tightly against him and to just have to lay there and do nothing and try not to think the kinds of things that would usually make him think, but Tony supposed it was just going to have to be tolerated. And if it was extremely frustrating, it also felt really nice, so he supposed he wasn’t really complaining.

When Steve came back, he had tea and Natasha. Tony motioned for Steve to leave the tea on the dresser. Natasha crouched down by the bed and ran a hand through Clint’s drying hair.

“Is he all right?” she asked.

“For the moment,” Tony said quietly. “And don’t bitch at me… I was just…”

“I wasn’t going to bitch at you,” she said, leaning over and touching her lips to his cheek. “I was going to thank you. Are you going to stay with him for a while?”

Tony chuckled. “I’m not sure I have a choice. He’s got a pretty good grip on me.”

Natasha smiled and stroked Clint’s cheek. “All right. If you need somebody to come switch places with you, make sure JARVIS gets me and not someone else, OK?”

“Sure. I mean, I’m not sure how enthusiastic Bruce is about cuddling, and I’m pretty sure Thor is a little _too_ enthusiastic about it, and Steve would just die of embarrassment, so…”

“You haven’t tested out Bruce’s cuddling skills yet?” Natasha asked.

Tony stared at her. “Bruce? What?”

“Never mind,” she said, grinning, as she turned on her heels and closed the door behind her.

 

 

 

Tony managed to keep himself distracted for a while thinking about work; modifications that needed to be made to the newest version of the suit, glitches in some of the targeting systems, adjustments to improve the efficiency of the arc reactor powering the building, things he could leave in the lab to confound and annoy Bruce when he stumbled upon them (a few unwrapped condoms left lying around in strategically inappropriate places came to mind). However, staying still for any length of time wasn’t something he was very good at, and he started to consider having JARVIS call Natasha and ask her to come take his place so he could get some work done. He wasn’t complaining about the current situation, necessarily; Clint’s arm was still wrapped around his waist and even in sleep his body was a tight ball of coiled muscle and compact strength. Impatience was starting to win the battle, though, especially since his brain had managed to convince other parts of his body that they weren’t going to get anything entertaining out of this encounter.

His thoughts were interrupted when his hand resting against Clint’s back felt a shiver run up his spine. Tony frowned and slid his hand up to the back of his neck, finding a trace of cold sweat starting to dampen his hair, and his skin cool despite the heat of the blanket over them.

“Huh,” he muttered. “Clint! Hey! Wake up… time to wake up! Come on… up! Awake!”

He shook him briskly. After a long moment, Clint shuddered and stirred against him, mumbling something against Tony’s chest. Tony shook him again, harder, and suddenly he was jerking back to consciousness, gray eyes dark and wild and confused, muscles tense and shivering. Tony could see his gaze flicking rapidly back and forth, trying to place himself, figure out where he was and why.

“Hey… Clint. It’s okay. Everything’s fine. You’re in your room. And don’t punch me… you’re the one who told me to stay. You listening?”

Clint’s eyes finally met his and he nodded.

“Yeah. I’m listening.”

Tony exhaled. “Okay. Are you all here now?”

“I think so. I was…”

“I know. You were starting to… it’s all right.”

Clint closed his eyes. “Shit. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened. I’ll be fine now. You can go… I’m… I mean, I’m sorry you… why are you here?”

“You asked me to stay with you.”

Clint’s face reddened and he turned his head away. “I’m sorry.”

“What the hell for? If I minded, I’d have found someone else to keep you company. I wanted to stay.”

“What for?”

“Well, because I’m not a very good therapist and I’m not great at being understanding and thoughtful and things like that… but I can be a warm body and I have ears.”

A sudden shiver ran through Clint’s muscles and Tony resisted the instinctive urge to pull him closer.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Just… trying to wake up. It takes a minute to… get all the way back.”

“I’ll leave if you want.”

“You can leave whenever you want,” Clint said quietly. “I’m sorry… you shouldn’t have to…”

“Now, hang on a second,” Tony said. “I’m not sure where you’re getting this ‘have to’ thing, but I didn’t have to do anything, and I don’t have to stay, but I sure as hell don’t mind… and it’s a lot less boring now that you’re talking.”

Clint pressed his forehead against his chest and tightened his grip. Tony took a deep breath and attempted to compose the parts of his brain that were supposed to assist with situations involving other people and feelings and such.

“Clint… listen. I’m not at all unhappy with being right where I am at the moment. But I have to tell you that… umm… certain parts of me are a little _too_ happy with where I am at the moment, and…”

“I’d noticed,” Clint murmured, and Tony thought he was smiling.

“I can…”

 

 

 

Clint’s brain wasn’t quite back to full speed yet; part of it was still shaking off shards of ice and trying to reawaken. He did know, though, that Tony was warm, and that he’d been laying here for who knew how long with Clint holding onto him like this and hadn’t left, and that loose-fitting sweatpants did very little to conceal the half-hard cock that was stirring against Clint’s side. He tried to assemble pieces in his head that didn’t seem to want to go together, but he realized Tony was asking him if he should leave, and no, he was quite certain that no matter what else was going on, he didn’t want Tony to go anywhere.

“Fuck,” Tony said, squirming. “Look, you’re going to have to let me get up. I can’t…”

Instead of an answer, he felt Clint shift against him, and then he raised his head from Tony’s chest, nose and lips tracing the line of his shoulder until they came to the hollow of his throat. Tony realized that there was a bead of sweat there just a moment before Clint’s mouth found it and just the tip of his tongue darted out to lick it away.

“Oh, hell,” Tony muttered, his hands clenching. “Clint, don’t do that…”

He felt Clint stiffen, start to recoil into himself.

“Don’t do that unless you mean it,” Tony managed.

“Oh.”

The lips were back on his throat, resting there, breath hot against Tony’s skin.

“What do you want?” Tony asked. “I don’t want to… I mean, you know, do something wrong…”

Clint shook his head.

“You’re not helping,” Tony said.

That drew a hint of a chuckle. “Sorry. Still not thinking very well.”

“Then maybe we…”

“Oh, no. I’m thinking well enough for this,” Clint said, and the heat of his mouth on Tony’s neck again made him gasp. “Unless you…”

“Unless nothing,” Tony said, his hand on the back of Clint’s head drawing him up until they were face to face. Those eyes… they really should be illegal, Tony thought absently, because he was pretty sure you couldn’t look at them and _not_ give the man whatever he wanted.

Their mouths came together, and Clint’s hand tightened on Tony’s hip, and fuck, the man was strong. And if anything had ever driven every thought out of Tony’s head faster than Clint’s teeth against his lower lip, he couldn’t remember what it might have been. Clint hooked a leg over Tony’s hip and dug a heel into his ass, and if that wasn’t an invitation, then Tony wasn’t sure what was, and couldn’t have ignored it even if he’d wanted to. He jerked forward against the body that was pressed into and wrapped around him, painfully aware of Clint’s nakedness and his cock hardening between them.

“It’s a bit too convenient you don’t have any clothes on,” Tony managed, when he needed a moment to breathe.

“Depends on what you have in mind.”

“Look, honestly, right now there’s just about nothing in my mind… everything’s pretty much gone to other regions… but I don’t want to push something on you and I don’t want to take advantage of a situation and…”

Clint opened his eyes and gave him a sharp look. “What part of this situation don’t you want to take advantage of? Because trust me… if I didn’t want this, the panic thing would already have kicked in and you’d be on the floor.”

“You sure about that?” Tony asked.

Clint chuckled. “That whole thing where you’re an asshole who doesn’t give a shit about other people…”

“Yeah?”

“You’re really, really lousy at holding it up in bed.”

Tony tried not to laugh. “I’m not sure my ex-girlfriends would say the same thing.”

“Well, considering the situation, and considering that you won’t just shut up and do something because you’re actually too worried about doing me some kind of harm… I’m not buying the asshole thing.”

“I’m still an asshole,” Tony insisted.

“Fine. Then start being an asshole and stop worrying and fucking _please_ do something…”

Tony laughed and kissed him, surprised at how demanding and almost desperate the response was, Clint’s hand gripping the back of his neck and holding on as he seemed to coil around Tony like a tightly wound spring. He let his hand run over the hard muscles of the archer’s chest, muscles that without the benefit of superhuman strength could draw and fire a bow most men could barely budge the string of. An alarm bell began to ring somewhere in his head, and he wanted to ignore it, but he wasn’t going to; this wasn’t just a warm and incredibly strong and desirable body in his bed. This was Clint and this was his teammate and his friend.

Clint felt him draw back and looked at him curiously “What?”

Tony found himself looking at his face, but couldn’t look him in the eyes.

“I have to know something.”

Wariness instantly twined through Clint’s body. “What?”

“Loki.”

Clint shivered. “Yeah. What about him?”

“He had you for days. I just…”

“I really, really don’t want to talk about that, Tony.”

“I know. I just… look. I don’t care about… I just want to know. Whatever he did with you… was it all business, or… other things too?”

Clint exhaled and dropped his eyes, but to Tony’s surprise he didn’t pull back.

“Mostly business. And… some other things.”

“More than once?”

A slow nod. Tony waited for a minute, more out of concern for saying the wrong thing than out of patience.

“I couldn’t do a thing about it,” Clint muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing. They were orders. I had to follow them. I had to let him…”

“He could make you do it. He couldn’t make you like it, though, could he?”

Clint looked up at him, somewhere between anger and puzzlement. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“I mean, you were still you. Part of you was still you, anyway. And I’ll bet it drove him up the fucking wall that no matter what he did, he couldn’t make you like it.”

Clint almost smiled, even as his eyes seemed to drift. “It drove him crazy. He was so fucking determined that he was going to make me enjoy it… and he couldn’t.”

“Clint,” Tony said, and the drifting eyes snapped back to alertness. “You hearing me?”

“Yeah. I am.”

“You want me to get up and leave you alone and go take a very long, very hot shower by myself?”

Clint laughed, and the tension that had crept back into him began to loosen. “It seems like kind of a waste, doesn’t it, since I’d have to go do the same thing?”

His heel was digging into Tony’s ass again, and it really wasn’t fair, what with Tony trying to be responsible and decent and make sure he wasn’t going to do more harm than good. It was the feeling of lips and tongue and teeth against his shoulder that cracked him, and his brain gave up any attempts at behaving properly, and he hauled Clint back up to kiss him again, bringing his knee up to bring their bodies into closer contact, with only Tony’s borrowed sweatpants between them. Clint grasped the waistband and tugged at it.

“You going to get rid of these?”

“Might as well, since they’re not even mine,” he said, and kicked at them until he managed to get his legs free.

“Better,” Clint said, his voice rough.

Tony felt the hesitation, felt Clint’s tight grip on him start to ease, slipping away just slightly.

“What?” Tony demanded.

Clint laughed unsteadily. “I’m… you know. Usually, you’re the master assassin and the secret agent and all, you’re supposed to be…”

“Running the show?” Tony asked.

Clint nodded.

“You don’t want to be running the show right now?”

Clint shook his head. “I need…”

“You need somebody to run the show for you for a little while?”

“Maybe.”

Well, fuck, Tony thought. As if he wasn’t already in a position to do some serious damage here… and now Clint wanted him to take the reins? But he was quite sure there was absolutely no way he could untangle himself and walk away from that quiet confession. And part of him wondered whether he was going to do more damage by walking away or by staying and at least trying to do it right.

“Okay,” he said finally, sitting up and pulling himself out of Clint’s arms. For a moment, distress and confusion flashed across Clint’s face, but only until Tony wrapped his hands around his wrists (as far around as he could get them, anyway) and rolled them both until he had Clint beneath him, hands on either side of his head with Tony’s weight holding them down and Tony’s body working its way between his legs, which shifted easily to accommodate him. He clenched his fists for a moment, feeling his muscles tighten in Tony’s grasp and reassuring himself that he was more than strong enough to free himself if he wanted to, and then relaxed.

“What do you want?”

“You. Everything. Just… do something that feels good.”

Tony laughed and thrust his hips against him, drawing the first trace of a moan he’d gotten out of Clint. “Like that?”

“I need more than that.”

Tony slid down, and grinned at the soft gasp Clint tried to silence as Tony’s cheek rubbed against his cock.

“You’re allowed to make a little noise, you know.”

“Yeah, well… you’ll have to make me.”

Damnit. Everybody knew Tony couldn’t resist a challenge.

 

 

 

He was a bit out of practice working with the male anatomy, but not out of practice enough to forget what worked, and certainly well-versed in being on the receiving end, so he put his best effort into it, determined to get a worthy reaction out of the stubbornly silent man whose hands were tangled in his hair as Tony’s tongue worked along his cock. His hips bucked and he twisted, breathing hard, but even when Tony could feel him start to shake, could feel his release start to gather in his lower body, he still hadn’t made a sound louder than a gasp for air.

Fine, Tony thought, releasing his cock abruptly. Clint jerked sharply and bit back a trace of a whine.

“What was that?”

“Damnit, why did you stop?”

“Letting you settle down for a minute.”

“I don’t _want_ to… oh, fuck!”

Tony laughed as he got back to work, but at a much slower, almost lazy pace, licking and stroking carelessly. Clint squirmed and tried to thrust up into his mouth, but Tony caught the movement and pulled back.

“Nope. I get to do this my way.”

“I’m going to grab your head and shove myself down your throat in a minute, you fucking cocktease…”

“Cocktease?” Tony repeated, grinning. “You’re in for it now.”

“Fuck,” Clint muttered.

He was in more trouble than he knew, because Tony, on the rare occasions when he felt so inclined, was very, very good at being a cocktease, and there were very few people who had the kind of single-minded, unwavering focus that clicked into Tony’s head when he was locked onto a project, and his project right now was that he was going to get a proper reaction out of Clint no matter what Clint had to say about it.

His first sign that he was winning the battle was when Clint’s breath started to catch with each gasp, and when his hands went from Tony’s hair to his shoulders so they could dig in for a better grip. The second sign was the shaking that had started in his legs and wouldn’t stop, and the way his hips arched up almost involuntarily.

“Tony, you evil bastard…” he gasped.

“That’s not going to do it,” Tony said, grinning up at him.

And damn, but Clint was stubborn; Tony’s jaw was starting to ache and he was wondering if he was going to have to stop playing around and let him come just because he wasn’t sure how long he could keep doing this. Just about at that moment, though, he dragged his teeth over the head of Clint’s cock, and that drew a sharp, muffled cry out of him that rose suddenly into a shout as he writhed and surrendered, Tony’s name escaping among the jumble of words as he went hard over the edge Tony had been riding him on.

Tony released him, rubbed his jaw, trying not to smirk. Clint was still shaking, and then it hit Tony like a brick that maybe he shouldn’t be playing games like that with the guy whose head was already all fucked up.

“Clint?”

He was relieved by a breathless chuckle. “Yeah?”

“Are you okay?”

“I don’t know. I’ll tell you when I can think straight again.”

Tony slid up the bed to look him in the face, but the eyes that met his were clear and untroubled, if slightly dazed. He laughed and completely failed to resist the impulse to brush the dark blond hair away from Clint’s forehead.

“I suppose I should do something for you,” he murmured.

Tony shook his head, shifted his weight, and planted a hand on either side of Clint’s ribcage.

“Just relax.”

He closed his eyes, letting himself focus on the slickness between their bodies as he thrust against Clint underneath him. It was an extra bonus the way Clint arched up with perfect timing to meet him, even has his pace increased, then became erratic, until he slumped and buried his face and whatever words escaped from him in Clint’s chest.

For a few minutes neither of them had anything in particular to say. The blankets has been tossed aside and the air of the room was cool across naked bodies.

“I sort of… wasn’t really expecting that,” Tony said.

Clint laughed. “Yeah, because I was, right?”

Tony tried to force himself to think; this after-sex part was where he usually managed to make his worst mistakes if he was going to make them. “I just… you seemed like you needed…”

Clint licked his jaw lazily. “Yeah. I did need.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“There’s one thing,” he said, and Tony sighed inwardly; this was the part where he’d messed something up somehow.

“What thing?”

“The thing where you’re my teammate… and my friend.”

“And… you’re thinking you want it to stay that way?”

Clint nodded. Tony grinned, relieved. “Good. I thought you were going to tell me I fucked something up.”

“Nope. Not as far as I know.”

Tony laid back and looked at the ceiling for a moment, then glanced over at Clint, whose eyes were starting to drift closed.

“So… teammates, friends, all that… does that mean we can’t do this again?”

Clint considered it for a moment. “I don’t see why we couldn’t…”

“Natasha’s going to know, isn’t she?”

“Of course she’s going to know. She knows everything.”

“Is she going to kill me?”

Clint smiled and shook his head. “Nah.”

“Why not?”

“She’d only kill you if you did something to hurt me.”

“Well, that’s really not the plan, you know…”

“I think she knows that,” Clint said.

“She’s got a funny way of showing it.”

“Give her some time. She’s… had a hard life. Trust isn’t easy for her.”

“It can’t be easy for you, either,” Tony said. “I mean, undercover work and all that. And all the… you know. How do you trust anyone?”

Those gray eyes turned on him again, studying his face for a long moment, and Tony realized that he was going to have a problem, because every time Clint looked at him like that from now on, he was going to have to try very hard to think about anything other than naked Clint in his bed, or make sure he was sitting down.

“I guess I just go with my gut. And hope it’s right.”

“Do you have any idea how…”

“Mph,” Clint muttered, swatting at the hand that reached for his more intimate parts. “Sleep now. Sex later.”

“Sex later? Promise?”

“No, I don’t promise, because I can pretty much guarantee that before that happens, someone’s going to come in here with some half-assed idea about something that we all have to go and do or some movie we all have to see or something like that.”

Tony sighed. “I suppose there’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’, right?”

“Yup.”

Tony yawned. “JARVIS, wake us up at five so we can at least get a shower before dinner. And are there still maids in the building?”

“Sir, there are always at least two maids in the building except between the hours of midnight and 4AM.”

“Okay. Well, after we leave for dinner, call one of them up here to change the bedsheets. And give her a nice tip.”

 

 

 

 

 

“Yes, sir.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor likes pizza. Natasha is amused. Tony plans activities and Clint's brain involuntarily cancels them. Bruce likes gluing electrodes to people.

 

 

 

Apparently no arrangements had been made for dinner for that evening, because when a freshly scrubbed and dressed Tony and Clint arrived in the living room, Thor was lying on the sofa with a box of granola bars, and Bruce was rummaging in the fridge.

“Where’s the rest of the crew?” Tony asked.

“Natasha took Steve out to dinner,” Bruce said.

Tony coughed. “She did what, now?”

Clint laughed. “Orders from Fury. She’s supposed to be helping him acclimate to modern New York. She’s supposed to take him out at least once a week for ‘cultural exposure’.”

“How’d she get that job?” Tony asked.

“Because Fury knows she’s the only one who feels bad enough for him to actually do it properly, instead of just fucking with him like you two science freaks would, and Thor’s not any better acclimated than Steve, although it doesn’t seem to concern Fury whether Thor’s acclimated or not…”

Thor raised a toast with a granola bar.

“And you have to admit, things go a lot smoother in a lot of places around here if you’ve got a stunningly beautiful woman on your arm,” Tony added.

“Especially if she happens to also be able to speak six languages and kill someone with a playing card,” Bruce said.

“She can’t really do that,” Tony retorted, glancing at Clint. “Can she?”

“I don’t know. You can ask her. I’m not going to.”

“Anyway,” Bruce said, “she’s out with the Captain for the evening… I’m not sure where she decided to take him. So Thor is devouring everything that comes in a box that looks like it might be food, and I’m looking for something to stick in the microwave.”

“Or I could order us something,” Tony said. “Thai? Indian? What sounds good?”

“Pizza,” Clint said.

Tony glanced at him and sighed. “You are so uncultured.”

“Oh, you mean I’m not a pretentious dickwad?”

Bruce snorted. “I’m good with pizza.”

Thor sat up hopefully. “Is pizza the round item that comes in a flat box with a variety of items on it? If so, I require at least five of them. Without the little round red bits. I don’t like those. But I like the mushrooms. And the cheese that stretches.”

“Fine,” Tony said, shaking his head. “JARVIS, call up the usual place and tell them we need five large mushroom, extra cheese pizzas, one large pepperoni pizza, and one large plain cheese pizza.”

“You did say five…”

“Yes, five.”

“Excellent, sir. Shall I order any beverages?”

“No,” Tony said quickly, before Thor could make a suggestion.

 

 

 

 

It was several hours later when Natasha, in a perfectly fitted green cocktail dress, strolled into the living room with the distinctive click of stiletto heels. She looked over the scene of the four men sprawled on the couch, a stack of pizza boxes and glasses of various drinks on the coffee table and end tables, and something about dinosaurs attacking each other on TV.

“I see you’ve had a productive evening without us,” she said.

“How was Captain Steve’s acculturation?” Tony asked.

The corner of her mouth turned up. “He’s not ready for clubbing yet, but I think the culture shock is wearing off a little bit. I have to admit he’s by far the nicest man I’ve ever been forced to go on a date with. Clint? You look better.”

He tried not to grin and tried not to look away, but Natasha was on him like a spider on the first twitch of a bug in its web.

“Clint Barton, get up right now and get over here,” she demanded.

He raised an eyebrow. “Do I have to?”

“If you don’t, I’ll just have JARVIS tell me everything and I’ll get more detail out of him than out of you, so it’s your choice.”

Clint glanced at Tony. “Too late to delete JARVIS’s memory banks, huh?”

“Yes, it is, and if he tries to tell me it’s classified information I’ll call Fury and have _him_ authorize it,” Natasha said, and Clint could see how desperately hard she was trying not to laugh, even if Tony couldn’t.

“All right, all right,” he said, surrendering.

She grabbed him by the arm and dragged him out into the hallway before collapsing against the wall in helpless laughter.

“You _slept_ with him. Oh my god.”

“Stop it!” he protested, trying not to laugh himself.

She bit her lip. “If you tell me he took advantage of… anything…”

Clint shook his head. “He didn’t. I swear. He… stop laughing! He kept trying to convince me to let him get up and leave because he didn’t want to mess me up any more than I already am.”

She took a deep breath to control her giggles. “Really?”

“Yeah, really.”

“And you made him stay?” she asked, exploding into laughter again. “Oh, fuck, Clint. That’s too funny. I can’t stand it.”

“What’s so funny?” he demanded.

“You… and fucking _Tony_ …”

He wasn’t laughing anymore, and she caught the expression on his face and straightened up, reining in her amusement.

“I’m listening,” she said.

“I… needed it, all right? I’d rather be thinking about that than about…”

“I know,” she said quickly. “It’s OK. I’m done laughing at you. Well, for the moment, anyway. You swear he didn’t push you or try to…”

“I wasn’t quite 100% there, but he was more worried about it than I was. I’m not kidding. I actually had to do some pretty serious convincing to get him to stay.”

“Hmm. So if he’s really not an asshole, why is he so determined to play one on TV?” she asked.

“I don’t know. But I promise…”

“I believe you. If you were lying, I’d know it. And somehow, I don’t see Tony wanting to do anything to hurt you. But you’re not really planning on… like, making this a thing, are you?”

“That wasn’t really the plan. Why?”

“Because Tony’s got a brain up in that head of his that works in really, really strange ways. And I’m pretty sure I’ve only met one other person that’s ever going to understand what’s going on up there and be able to live with Tony being Tony when his genius gets in the way of everything else.”

“You haven’t been thinking about this or anything,” he said, grinning.

“Not a bit.”

“What makes you think Bruce is even interested?”

“He’s interested. He just doesn’t know he’s interested, because his brain’s off on the same planet Tony’s is.”

“You have a plan, don’t you.”

“Not so much a plan, yet. Just watching the situation.”

“So does it mess up your plan if…”

She raised her eyebrows. “If you keep fucking Tony? Was that your plan?”

“I don’t have a plan either.”

“Well, just… if he makes you feel better, go for it. But you know you two aren’t serious relationship material, so don’t play like it is.”

“Teammates. Friends.”

Natasha nodded and tried not to start laughing again. “Friends.”

“Shut up, Nat.”

She kissed his cheek. “I’m glad you have friends here that I actually trust to take care of you.”

“They’d take care of you, too,” he said.

“I know. I’m just not ready to test it yet,” she said quietly. “I’m going to get changed and read a book or something. I’ve had enough of being Little Miss Social Butterfly for tonight.”

“Enjoy. You earned it,” he said.

She had already stepped into the elevator before he remembered what he was going to say.

“You look gorgeous tonight, Nat.”

The door closed on a rare but sweetly grateful smile.

 

 

 

 

Clint walked back into the living room to a few raised eyebrows, but Thor was busy talking about some kind of creature in Asgard and whether it could defeat the Tyranosaurus Rex that was currently on the TV screen in a proper battle, so Clint settled back down on the couch and let him talk.

“How was the interrogation?” Tony muttered, leaning over.

“Fine… when she could stop laughing enough to get a few words out.”

Tony looked offended. “I resent that.”

“She doesn’t care.”

Tony shrugged. “Yeah, I don’t really resent it that much. Speaking of which, what did you have planned for later?”

Bruce glanced over at them. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“I didn’t have anything particular planned,” Clint said, buying himself a few minutes to think properly by getting up and heading for the fridge for something to drink.

It was apparently a good thing that he didn’t have anything particular planned, because he suddenly realized his brain was about to sabotage his evening. It started when he realized that his hand reaching for the fridge door appeared to be moving in slow motion and in a strange way that didn’t seem to have anything to do with him. Then there was a sharp metallic taste in his mouth and a burning, acrid smell, and that was the last thing he would be aware of for quite a while.

 

 

 

 

Thor and Bruce were too busy debating the merits of various dinosaurs and their fighting abilities, with Thor vouching that he’d fought several of them personally and they didn’t really act like that, but Tony was watching Clint as he stood in front of the fridge, staring blankly at his hand.

“Clint?” he called.

Without a sound, Clint abruptly disappeared behind the counter as he fell.

“What the hell,” Tony gasped, out of his seat.

“What?” Bruce asked.

Thor frowned. “Where did Clint go?”

Tony swung around the counter and froze. He might have been half-prepared to find Clint passed out but he was not at all prepared to find him locked in a painful arch, his eyes rolled back and jaw clenched, sharp jerks running up and down his arms and legs.

“What the fuck…”

“He’s having a seizure,” Bruce said.

“What the fuck for?”

“I don’t know!” Bruce exclaimed.

“What do we do?”

“Wait a minute and see if he comes out of it.”

“That’s it?” Tony demanded.

 “Seizures are usually self-limiting.”

“What if they’re not?”

“Then you have a problem. How much medical equipment do you have down in the lab?”

“More than some hospitals, probably. Pepper insisted on it, when I was doing a lot of experimenting on myself. Fuck… it’s not stopping, Bruce.”

“No, it’s not,” Bruce said, frowning. “I don’t like this. Thor, can you carry him like this?”

Thor nodded. “I won’t hurt him?”

“Probably not. Tony, I’m going to assume that since you seem to have an entire hospital’s worth of drugs stashed around here, you have some Valium or some Ativan.”

“Yeah.”

“OK. We need some of that. Preferably in an injectable form.”

Thor had managed to figure out a way to get the awkwardly rigid body off the floor and half-draped over his shoulder, and was listening to the conversation anxiously.

“Is that something that will fix this?”

“It’ll stop the seizure. No fucking around, though,” Bruce said briskly, waving a hand at Tony. “Get on it. If you don’t have some form of injectable benzodiazepine, get some… like, _right now_. A seizure that doesn’t stop can cause permanent damage.”

“What can I do?” Thor asked unhappily.

“Come with me. We’ll take him down to the lab and at least I can stick some monitors on him and try to figure out what the hell is going on.”

Tony stood for a moment, as if trying to process this version of Bruce. Then he darted off, grabbing his phone off the table as he went and dialing as he disappeared around the corner. Bruce motioned, and Thor followed, wrestling to try to control the unconscious and convulsing body he was gripping.

 

 

 

 

“Should I ask why you keep injectable Ativan in stock?” Bruce asked, looking up at Tony in the bright light of the lab.

“I dunno. I told Pepper to stock everything I might need if I did something horrible to myself.”

“It has nothing to do with me and the Other Guy and needing to put me out if you had to, right?”

“Not that I know of. But I suppose that would work.”

Bruce looked back down at Clint’s arm, which Thor was holding still.

“I haven’t inserted an IV in a long time.”

“He’s not feeling it,” Tony said impatiently. “Hurry up.”

The cot, one of several scattered about the lab for certain scientists who couldn’t be bothered to make it back to their bedrooms, groaned as Thor braced his knee on it.

“He’s strong, for an ordinary mortal.”

“They’re tonic-clonic muscle convulsions,” Bruce said absently, his attention on the needle between his fingers. “There. Where’s the Ativan?”

“Will that work?”

“It had better work,” Bruce said. “It usually does. Just depends on how much you have to give them. Thor, tell me if you feel him starting to relax or stop shaking, OK? And Tony, tell me if whatever the hell is showing up on the EEG starts to look anything like normal… there aren’t enough sensors on him to get a good reading but I know it shouldn’t look like that.”

All three of them watched the liquid from the syringe start to disappear.

“Anything?” Bruce asked.

“Not yet,” Tony said.

“Well, shit. Guess we’ll give him some more. Good thing it’s pretty hard to kill someone with an Ativan overdose. Not impossible, of course…”

“That’s not comforting,” Tony said.

After a few very long and very tense minutes, Thor looked up and smiled. “I think it’s working.”

Tony nodded. “Whatever the hell that is all over the EEG screen is starting to flatten out.”

Bruce sighed and rubbed his face with his shirt. “Good. Because that was about as much as I was going to give him before I told you to call the paramedics.”

Thor stepped back; besides the occasional twitch of his limbs, Clint was sprawled out unmoving on the cot, the rigidity disappearing. Bruce exhaled and leaned back in his chair, glancing up at Tony again.

“Well, that’s better.”

“What the hell?” Tony demanded. “There’s no way he has any history of seizure activity or epilepsy, or S.H.I.E.L.D. wouldn’t have taken him. You know they scan the hell out of their agents.”

“I think it’s got something to do with Loki shoving himself in there,” Bruce said. “The human brain has all kinds of switches and safeguards and controls… the brain stem, the basal ganglia, the cerebellum, the hypothalamus… it’s a complex regulatory mechanism and there’s a constant feedback to keep everything in balance. I think Loki overrode or overloaded all of that, and even if Loki’s gone, the system’s still way out of balance and the feedback loops aren’t working and he’s pretty much short-circuiting.”

“Is that permanent?” Tony asked.

“Probably not?” Bruce said, shrugging. “I have no idea, really. If you’ll help me out with getting some electrodes properly arranged so we can get some decent readings, I can make a better guess, but whatever Loki overloaded should stabilize after a while… they scanned him when they got him back and there was no indication of any actually neurological damage, so he’s not broken. The autonomic and peripheral nervous systems should start self-regulating again properly at some point…”

“Is that why he’s dropping his body temperature again?” Tony asked, frowning as he laid a hand on Clint’s arm.

“Again?”

“Yeah. It’s sort of a thing.”

“Autonomic dysregulation,” Bruce said. “Wires getting crossed. You could plug in that space heater over there and set it to blow some heat on him, but watch he doesn’t get too warm.”

Thor looked over at Tony. “Is this really the ideal place for him to be recovering? This is a rather flimsy structure, and all the metal and lights and robots don’t make it a very peaceful environment.”

Tony shrugged and glanced at Bruce. “I suppose if I was going to wake up from a seizure, I probably wouldn’t want to wake up here.”

“That much Ativan, he’s not waking up anywhere for at least twelve or fourteen hours,” Bruce said. “And when he does wake up, he’s going to be pretty out of it and someone’s going to need to watch him so he doesn’t fall and hurt himself. That, and there’s no guarantee he won’t have another seizure, either.”

Thor gestured at the EEG monitor and the tray of supplies and monitor leads waiting to be attached. “Is there a reason this can’t all just be moved to his room?”

“Not really,” Bruce said. “If he’s going to be here instead of in the hospital, there’s probably not much we can do for him in the lab that we couldn’t do in his room. At this point all I want to do is glue some more wires to his head and let the machine track things… although it’s going to be tracking a bunch of nothing for a while. He’s pretty deep. But I want to look at the data we got off the sensors while the seizure was still happening and compare them to whatever else I can find, and the computers…”

“Perhaps you two science men can attend to that task, and you’ll allow me to watch over our friend. I promise I’ll alert you if anything happens.”

Tony shrugged. “It’s fine with me. I’m better at analyzing data than sitting beside somebody’s bed anyway.”

“Last I heard, you weren’t exactly sitting beside his bed,” Bruce said, with a slight trace of a smirk.

“Oh, fuck off. We have work to do,” Tony said, bouncing to his feet in what might have been an attempt to change the subject. “Let’s get Clint up to his room and you can glue whatever you want to his head, and we’ll come back in here and look at the data and let Thor keep an eye on Sleeping Beauty here for a while, since we can’t do much else with him. JARVIS should be able to sync whatever the EEG is reading with the computers in here, so if anything changes we’ll know it.”

 

 

 

It took some navigating with Tony pushing the cart with the EEG machine and trying to keep up with Thor so the electrodes didn’t get pulled off Clint’s head, but eventually Bruce was satisfied with the arrangement and with his work.

“He looks like a hedgehog,” Tony said. “How many electrodes did you stick on his head? And how’s he supposed to get them off?”

“I want a lot of data,” Bruce said. “And he can just shave his head if he has to. It’s not like he has that much hair anyway.”

Tony ran his hands through his own hair and looked over at Thor. “If I ever need medical treatment, don’t let Bruce anywhere near my head.”

Thor raised a hand to his own long hair. “I would prefer nothing be glued to mine, either.”

Bruce rolled his eyes. “Good. You two can admire yourselves and your gorgeous hair in the mirror while I…”

Thor reached over and ruffled Bruce’s curls. “You have very nice hair too.”

“Stop that!” he protested, swatting the hand away.

“What’s the matter?” Tony asked, eyes lighting up. “You don’t like people playing with your hair?”

“Leave my hair alone… hey! What the fuck!”

He was suddenly on the floor with both Thor and Tony mercilessly ruffling and fluffing his hair while Thor sat on him.

“You’re going to… get the Other Guy going!” he protested, trying not to laugh.

“Whatever. There’s enough Ativan on that cart to have the Other Guy sleeping like a gigantic green puppy,” Tony said, grinning.

“You fucking idiots… let me up!”

The rolled aside, and Bruce scrambled to his feet, trying to look pissed off and put his hair back in place while forcing himself not to smile.

“Seriously. Idiots. Don’t we have some work to do or something?”

Tony sighed. “All work and no play makes Bruce a dull boy.”

“All play and no work makes Tony a…”

“Oh, give it a rest,” Tony said, grabbing him by the arm. “Come on. I want to look at those scans as much as you do. I’m not an expert on EEG’s, but…”

“Oh, wait, you’re not an expert on something?” Bruce asked, raising his eyebrows.

Thor could hear them as they argued their way down the hall.

“I still think that didn’t look like any kind of normal seizure.”

“You wouldn’t know what a normal seizure looked like if someone handed you a picture of one. The irregular electrical activity is…”

“I know about the irregular electrical activity. I’m talking about the pattern of…”

 

 

 

Thor sighed and glanced over at the bed, where his charge was stretched out, unresponsive and still, a tangle of wires running from his head to the machine on the cart, white discs that held the electrical sensors plastered across his forehead and temples, the electric blanket turned up to “high” and pulled up to his chin.

“Maybe they’ll find something with their science,” he said. “But I don’t think science will be what helps you, little Hawk.”

He settled down in the chair and put his feet up on the dresser, settling in for a long wait. He didn’t mind. He had patience, hundreds of years of it if needed, and a few dull hours didn’t bother him much. He had plenty of fights and feasts and battles and other things to play and replay in his head to entertain himself.

His musings were interrupted fairly quickly by the now-familiar sound of the elevator door. He took his feet off the dresser just as Natasha burst in. She had traded her dress for gray shorts and a black T-shirt and washed off her makeup.

“Clint… Thor, what the hell happened? What’s… why does he have all those wires on his head? What happened to him?”

“They said he had a seizure?”

“What? Why?”

“They don’t seem to know. Dr. Banner said something about Loki and crossed wires and… I’m sorry, Agent Romanov. I can’t always follow them when they talk to each other.”

She shook her head. “Don’t worry, honey. Nobody can. And my name isn’t Agent Romanov. And… fuck. Is he OK? What happened?”

Thor attempted to explain the events and the discussion between the two scientists as well as he could.

“And I asked them if he wouldn’t be more comfortable waking up here in his own room, so they moved all of this up here, and they are off monitoring everything on their computers.”

“Oh,” she said quietly, still standing and staring at Clint.

“Ag… Natasha? Are you all right?”

“No,” she said, and the tears she was usually so good at holding back spilled over her cheeks. She’d be damned if she’d cry in front of any of the others, even Steve, but somehow it seemed all right in front of the demigod.

He was on his feet immediately and wrapped his arms around her. Her instant reaction was to shove him away; every instinct she’d programmed into her body told her being held like this was dangerous. She forced herself to relax and rested her head on the broad chest as he stroked her hair.

“I didn’t know you ever cried.”

“I don’t,” she said, her voice shaky.

“It hurts to see a friend suffer,” he said. “And if they must suffer, I prefer it be in a situation where I can intervene with my hammer and turn the cause of the suffering into hole in the ground, but I don’t think that will help here.”

“I prefer problems I can put a knife in,” Natasha said, wiping her eyes and looking up at him. “I don’t like this. I can’t help him.”

“I think we can help him. Together. All of us. You and I and the science men and the Captain. We will make certain that he is back to himself.”

“I should stay here with him…”

“Natasha, you look weary. And Dr. Banner said he’ll sleep for many hours. Perhaps you should go and rest now and come back in the morning, and you can be here when he wakes.”

Natasha nodded, looking back at Clint. “You’ll stay here with him?”

“I swear I will.”

“Okay,” she said, rubbing her face. “I’m sorry for…”

“You have nothing to be sorry for. Go and sleep.”

 

 

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Bruce do science and then do some other things. Thor is instructed to make Clint provide the scientists with some interesting data, and everybody gets more than they bargained for.

Clint woke to the awareness that there was something warm and wet on his chest and that he wasn’t at all sure this was a good thing. He jerked himself into consciousness and forced his eyes open to realize that Thor was sitting on the bed with a bowl of water and a wet wash cloth.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, completely lost. The last thing he remembered was something about eating pizza and Natasha laughing at him.

“You’ve been asleep for a while,” Thor said cheerfully.

Clint groaned and tried to hunt for some memory to explain this, but failed. “Okay… how long have I been asleep? And why?”

“You’ve been asleep for almost a whole day.”

“What the fuck for?” Clint asked, starting to feel more than a little uneasy about the complete gap in his memory. He had also just realized that there were a mass of wires stuck to his head, and he grabbed at them with alarm, but Thor snatched his hands away.

“Don’t take those off! Dr. Banner will be very annoyed! He was quite sharp with me earlier when I unplugged them from the machine so you could go use the bathroom.”

“Why the fuck does Banner have wires all over my head?”

“Because you had…” Thor began, then frowned. “JARVIS, please explain.”

“Sir, you experienced a full grand mal seizure. Dr. Banner and Mr. Stark injected you with a large amount of medication to stop it when it became necessary. They are tracking your neurological activity in an attempt to determine what happened and to monitor if any further seizure activity occurs.”

“What he said,” Thor added.

“Shit,” Clint muttered. “So I suppose the large amount of medication is why I’ve been asleep?”

“You’re much better than you were before,” Thor said, amused. “Captain Steve and Natasha were here earlier and you were trying to tell them jokes. I didn’t understand any of them, but Natasha said that’s because you weren’t telling them properly anyway. And you were complaining about wanting a shower, but Dr. Banner said you couldn’t because of the wires on your head, so…”

He held up the wash cloth. Clint studied it for a moment, his brain still catching up with the information it had just been given.

“I don’t remember any of that.”

“Dr. Banner said you probably wouldn’t. He said you probably wouldn’t be properly awake or remember much of anything until this evening. So I’ve been waiting for this evening for you to wake up and talk to me.”

“Oh. How long have you been sitting here?”

“A while,” Thor said absently, and returned to what he’d been doing. Clint squirmed, but the warm cloth felt nice, and he did feel sweaty and dirty, and there was still just enough medication in his system to make it hard to think of a reason while he should object to it. Thor was very thorough about his work, lifting each of his arms to wash them while Clint watched him curiously.

“Why are you doing that?”

“I told you. Because Dr. Banner said you couldn’t have a shower, and you wanted one.”

“Oh. Right. You did say that. I wish I remembered telling you that.”

“It’s all right,” Thor said. “You seem much more alert now. It was a bit concerning to see you so… altered, but I have to admit it was slightly entertaining, too.”

“Why was it entertaining?”

Thor tried not to laugh. “Well, first of all, Tony was annoyed with me for not keeping an eye on you in the bathroom… because for a man with usually impeccable aim, apparently…”

Clint snorted. “That’s what they get for drugging the shit out of me.”

“Well, at least you seem back to yourself now… maybe a bit calmer than usual, but mostly back to yourself.”

“I’m trying to stay calm, considering I’ve got Stark and Banner looking at my brain waves and I don’t know why I’ve been out for most of a day and I don’t know what this is about a seizure…”

“It was quite alarming,” Thor said, frowning. “I’m glad Dr. Banner knew what to do. And that apparently Tony has most of a modern hospital over in his lab.”

Clint shuddered. “Right. Because if they’d had to take me to a hospital, it would have ended up on record, and Fury and S.H.I.E.L.D. would have got wind of it, and that would have been the end of my career as an agent.”

Thor rubbed his head between the wires with his fingers. “You’ll get better.”

“I hope… hell, that feels good. My head itches like crazy.”

Thor smiled and continued to work his fingers into the parts of Clint’s scalp that didn’t have electrodes stuck to them. Clint sighed and relaxed into the touch.

“That’s awesome.”

“Very good. If you roll over, I can reach the back of your head… and the parts of you I haven’t washed yet.”

“You don’t have to…”

Thor chuckled. “You seem to be under the impression that I object to it. You are quite mistaken. I like doing anything that makes my friend feel better.”

Clint really couldn’t argue with that logic, and the back of his head itched just as much as the front of it, so he flipped himself over, still feeling like his muscles had been injected with lead, and let Thor’s fingers start working on the back of his scalp. He sank into a contented daze that was barely interrupted when Thor took the wash cloth again and set about giving his neck and back and shoulders a steady, thorough scrub. A sigh of contentment escaped him, and Thor rumbled his amusement.

“Are you happy, little Hawk?”

“At the moment, yeah. But you don’t…”

“Stop being silly.”

“OK.”

JARVIS’s voice interrupted them.

“Sir? Dr. Banner and Mr. Stark want to know what Agent Barton is doing.”

“He’s fucking relaxing,” Clint said.

There was a minute of silence, during which Clint was certain JARVIS was conversing with the two scientists.

“Dr. Banner and Mr. Stark are complaining that they have twenty-some hours of data of Agent Barton relaxing and they demand that Thor wake him up and make him do something interesting.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, sir. Whether Dr. Banner and Mr. Stark are serious or not is beyond my ability to compute at this time.”

Clint groaned. Thor laughed and patted his shoulder.

“You realize we could give them some very interesting brain waves if you wished.”

Clint raised an eyebrow. “What did you have in mind?”

Thor reached down, and a large hand found Clint’s ass and gave it a squeeze.

“Something of that sort. Would that not produce interesting data for them?”

Clint glanced over at the tall figure next to him, grinning easily and, despite the t-shirt and loose jeans somehow still very distinctly not your average man.

“Umm..”

“It was just a suggestion,” Thor said lightly, removing his hand. “I’m sure…”

“I didn’t say it was a bad suggestion,” Clint said. “But I have to warn you, I’m still pretty uncoordinated at the moment. I guess it must be the medication. Feels sort of like my brain’s sobered up but my body’s still drunk.”

“Well, then,” Thor said, “you will just have to relax and allow me to do the work. Will you allow me to please you, little Hawk?”

There were probably reasons to say no to that offer, but Clint couldn’t think of any. The idea of Tony and Bruce staring at the computer readouts of the EEG and trying to figure out what the hell he was doing was an entertaining bonus, but frankly, he didn’t really need much of an excuse.

“If that’s what you want…” he said.

“Have I not made it quite clear what I want?” Thor said, and he shifted his weight to make sure Clint could see the bulge pressing at the front of his jeans.

Clint swallowed. “I suppose you have.”

“Do you trust me?”

Again, Clint supposed this should have been a harder question than it was, but he couldn’t think of any reason why.

“Yeah. I do.”

Clint didn’t think he’d ever seen exactly that look on Thor’s face before, but he was pretty sure he knew exactly what it meant.

“JARVIS, lock the door. And turn off the cameras.”

“Agent Barton, you are supposed to be being monitored by…”

Thor pulled his t-shirt over his head and, with an expert toss, flung it over the camera where it protruded from the wall.

“I suppose that will serve the same function, sir,” JARVIS said, and Clint was quite certain the AI sounded peeved.

“Good. Now turn off the audio, too.”

“Yes, sir.”

 

 

 

“JARVIS! Why is the camera turned off?” Tony demanded.

“Agent Barton ordered it, sir.”

“Did you tell him we needed it to monitor…”

“Yes, sir. They did not consider this a valid argument.”

Bruce looked up from the computer. “Now what?”

“They’ve made JARVIS shut off the camera.”

Bruce chuckled. “Maybe Thor took your ‘wake him up and make him do something interesting’ in a different way than you thought.”

“Well, whatever they’re doing, they should be doing it on-camera,” Tony protested.

Bruce raised an eyebrow. “Really. Why. You wanna watch? Didn’t know you got off on that.”

Tony shot him a sharp glare. “I was talking about monitoring our patient.”

“Of course you were,” Bruce said, standing up and rubbing the back of his neck. “Well, if it makes you feel better, according to the EEG he’s _definitely_ not asleep anymore.”

“Would you be, under the circumstances?”

“I wouldn’t have Thor in my bed, under the circumstances.”

Tony shrugged. “Not a fan of guys in your bed?”

Bruce looked back at the computer screen. “Didn’t say that. Just don’t go for the tall, blond demigod type, that’s all.”

“Why not?”

“Because they tend to be the kind of guys that don’t want anything to do with guys like me. And don’t start on the whole thing about how scientists can get laid… all those Playboy bunnies were fucking you for your money and your looks, not your brain.”

“Hmm. Jealous much?”

“Of course I’m jealous,” Bruce said. “You get to be the smart guy _and_ the guy everyone wants to sleep with, and I just get to be the smart guy who turns into a gigantic green irrational monstrosity.”

“Hey, they say that for every kink, there’s someone who gets off on it…”

“Fuck off, Tony,” Bruce said sharply.

Tony sighed and tried to replay the conversation to figure out when he had veered into pissing-Bruce-off territory, but that was pretty much impossible, because Bruce was even harder for him to read than most normal people.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

Bruce leaned back in his chair and looked up at him. “Did you just apologize?”

“Umm… yeah?”

“Huh. How about that.”

He stood up and walked to the bank of computer monitors displaying the video from various cameras across the building, scanning them absently. Tony, watching him, noticed the moment he froze, his head snapping to alertness.

“What?”

“Umm… it appears whatever those two threw over the camera has fallen off,” Bruce murmured, staring at the screen. “I thought they told JARVIS to turn it off.”

Tony shrugged. “JARVIS, did you leave the camera on?”

“I was actually only specifically instructed to turn off the audio, sir, since they had already addressed the video monitoring.”

Tony stepped up behind Bruce and glanced over his shoulder, curious what had put the odd look on Bruce’s face.

“Fuck!” he exclaimed.

“Umm… yup. That’s what that is,” Bruce said, his voice rough.

“Umm… wow. Shit. I… OK, JARVIS, turn off the camera. I’m pretty sure we’re not supposed to be seeing this.”

“I’m quite certain you’re not, sir,” JARVIS said, and the screen switched to a security camera in one of the downstairs halls.

Bruce took a step back and managed to back directly into Tony, who backed into a chair and stumbled, nearly landing on his ass before Bruce grabbed his arm and hauled him back to his feet.

“Having trouble?” he asked.

Tony couldn’t help but glance downward. “Sorta looks like I’m not the only one.”

Bruce’s face reddened, and he turned away quickly. “Like I said, fuck off.”

Damnit, Tony thought. Did that part wrong too.

“Hey… I sort of meant that… you know…”

“No, I do not know,” Bruce said deliberately, looking at the EEG screen again.

“I meant… maybe I could help.”

Bruce gave him an even stare. “Really.”

“Look, if I’m completely on the wrong planet here, it wouldn’t be the first time… I mean, it wouldn’t be the hundredth time… and I should just go ask Steve to punch me in the face or go jerk off or something…”

“Tony?”

“Yes?”

“You’re rambling.”

“Umm… yeah.”

Bruce seemed to suddenly be a lot closer than he’d been a moment ago, or else Tony had taken the steps and not realized it.

“You do that when you don’t want people to realize you have no idea what the fuck you’re doing.”

“What am I doing?”

Bruce smiled. “I think you were making a totally incompetent attempt to do this.”

He leaned forward and hooked a hand behind Tony’s head and pulled him in and kissed him. And Tony might have had something like that in mind, but he certainly hadn’t expected it to go straight to that part, and he certainly hadn’t expected Bruce to kiss him with that kind of heat.

Bruce released him abruptly. “Was that not what you had in mind?”

“Actually, that was a lot better,” Tony managed, still trying to unscramble his brain.

“Natasha told me you were making a special effort to be a dick to me for a reason,” he said, crowding Tony back against the wall. “You know, sort of like punching the girl you like in first grade?”

“Oh, this goes way beyond anything I had in mind in first grade,” Tony murmured.

Bruce pressed him against the wall and kissed him again, and Tony reached up and grabbed a handful of curly hair. Bruce chuckled and stepped back, and Tony whined at the loss of contact.

“Hey… come back here!”

“Nope,” Bruce said mildly, walking back over to the EEG machine. “I want to run this new data through the computer and see how it compares to…”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Tony exhaled, straightening up. “You can’t do _that_ and then go right back to work!”

“Watch me,” Bruce said, smirking at Tony over his shoulder. “I can be a dick too, you know. I just strategically plan the times when I want to be a dick.”

“Why does it have to be _now_?”

“Because you’ve been fucking with me since the first time you met me. So now it’s my turn.”

Tony stared at him. “You’re evil.”

Bruce smiled serenely. “Yes. Yes, I am. And when it comes to sex… or anything else, actually, I have a _lot_ more patience than you do. Now, are you going to come over here and help me run these through the computer and see if JARVIS can pinpoint anything interesting?”

Tony muffled a curse. “Fine. But why is the EEG screen blank?”

Bruce frowned and tapped the screen. “JARVIS? Why is the EEG screen blank?”

There was a moment of hesitation, as if the AI was deciding how to explain the situation.

“Well, sir, it was collecting readings from the electrodes you had on Agent Barton.”

“Yes, I know that.”

“Well, sir, it seems that during certain… recreational activities… our Asgardian associate’s powers with electricity become… stimulated.”

Tony almost dropped the tablet he’d just picked up. “Are you telling me he shocks people when he… what the fuck did he do to Clint?”

“Nothing that he seems to object to, sir. But apparently you shouldn’t leave any sensitive electrical equipment hooked up to…”

Bruce banged his head against the EEG screen. “This place is just about more than I can deal with sometimes. Are you sure nothing got fried besides the machine?”

“I’ll check, sir.”

They waited for a moment, until JARVIS’s voice returned.

“Sir, Agent Barton says he is fine.”

Tony scowled. “I want to know exactly what Agent Barton said. Verbatim.”

He could almost hear JARVIS sigh. “Verbatim, sir? He used some very questionable language and said that if you didn’t want your machine broken, you shouldn’t have glued it to his head.”

“So in other words, he’s fine,” Tony said.

“Sounds okay to me,” Bruce said, shrugging. “Well… whatever data the machine got before it toasted ought to be interesting. Want to take a look?”

“Might as well,” Tony said. “It’s that or a really cold shower.”

Bruce grinned. “Science now. Libido later.”

“Asshole.”

 

 

 

Clint looked up at the t-shirt hanging over the camera and grinned and turned to say something to Thor about Tony and Bruce not appreciating it much. However, what he found when he turned was Thor sprawled on the bed next to him with no shirt on, looking back at him expectantly, and whatever he was going to say turned into an incoherent “umm” of some sort.

“You find me pleasing to look at?” Thor asked.

“Is this a trick question?”

Thor shrugged good-naturedly. “I don’t know what pleases the people of Midgard.”

“I don’t imagine it’s too different, really,” Clint said, suddenly hoping it wasn’t and realizing that Thor was, technically, an alien, and that he might be possibly getting himself in over his head.

Thor ran a broad palm down Clint’s back. “I don’t imagine it’s too different either, from what I’ve seen. Although some of the videos in Tony’s collection…”

Clint snorted and buried his face in the pillow. “Oh, hell. What did you find?”

“Well, Natasha had taught me how to look on the computer screen at the list of videos, and I thought that some of the titles sounded interesting…”

“And they were porn. I’m sure some of them were really weird porn, too, just knowing Tony and the kind of stuff he collects just for shits and giggles. I can pretty much guarantee you that if it looked like something most people wouldn’t do, it probably was.”

“That’s probably a good thing,” Thor said, and his hand had made its way to Clint’s ass again and was fondling it in a blatantly suggestive fashion.

“Tony collects weird.”

“Is that why he wanted all of us to live here?”

Clint thought about it. “Possibly.”

He felt Thor’s weight shift and heard the drawer of the nightstand open and close, and Thor made a small sound of satisfaction at finding what he was looking for. Clint almost laughed; apparently Tony had provided the same stash of condoms, lube, and other random items in everyone’s nightstand. He wondered what Captain America had thought of it.

He stopped thinking about Captain America, or much of anything, really, when Thor’s hand returned to what it was doing, except that this time his fingers were slippery and more determined as they slid between his buttocks. Clint shifted his weight and closed his eyes.

“It’s handy that they make products specifically for this purpose,” Thor said, his tone conversational.

“Why? What do you use in Asgard?”

“Whatever’s available. This is better.”

One finger was patiently but unhesitatingly working its way in as he spoke, and Clint tried to let himself be distracted by Thor talking, but it wasn’t enough to take his attention off the burn and the trace of anxiety that began to crawl up his spine. Then Thor rumbled contentedly and tucked his long frame against Clint’s side, his skin warm and soothing, and Clint could feel the roughness of his beard as he nipped at Clint’s shoulder and neck.

“Do you want me to stop?”

Clint considered it for a moment, but during that moment, Thor’s curiously seeking finger managed to find its target, and the sudden flare of sensation that arched through his body and sent a flash of light in front of his eyes silenced whatever doubt he might have had.

“Oh, fuck… do that again.”

“Of course,” Thor chuckled, and there was the pressure of another finger, but then it didn’t matter because what those fingers were doing was so fucking good that there was no room for anything else except the vague awareness that his hands were clutching the pillow tightly enough to make his fingers hurt, and that he was pushing himself back against Thor’s free hand resting on his hip, and that it was his voice, louder than he intended but beyond his control, pleading with him not to stop. His cock was trapped between his body and the bed, and Thor’s hand was holding him too firmly to let him thrust against the sheets.

His ability to think was almost completely gone and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could endure the relentless work of Thor’s fingers when they suddenly withdrew, and he was only half-aware of his own moan of disappointment and frustration. It didn’t last long, though, because Thor grasped him and flipped him in one easy motion onto his back. His body thumped against the mattress and his cock was now deprived even of the contact of the sheets, and he whined and thrust up against empty air and reached for himself, but Thor quickly caught both of his wrists in one big hand and slid them up above his head.

“Not yet, little Hawk.”

“Goddamnit, I’m dying… fucking do something…” he pleaded.

“I would have you now, if you would allow it.”

Some thought made its way through the haze of pleasure and he looked down and realized that he’s never seen Thor naked and hard before, and that he should have expected that the big man would be equipped as one might expect a god to be.

“I…”

Thor looked down, amused. “That seems to be the reaction from every mortal who finds me in such a state. I can assure you, though, that the others survived unharmed and I will make sure you do the same.”

The uncertainty making its way into Clint’s head collided sharply with the half-blinded, demanding need that filled the rest of it. Thor leaned over and kissed him warmly.

“I promise not to hurt you.”

The kiss was just enough to shove the uncertainty firmly out on its ass and made his cock jump, reminding him that it was waiting desperately for someone to do something. Thor reached down and wrapped one hand around it, stroking lazily, and Clint moaned and tipped his head back, which only gave Thor better access to nip and suck at the soft skin of his throat.

“What do you want, little Hawk?”

“You.”

“You want…”

“Yes, damnit. All of you. Everything. Please. I need…”

Thor kissed him again, silencing the words that he couldn’t seem to stop once they’d started, even when there was no breath behind them.

Thor was a man of his word, and patient enough to nearly drive Clint out of his mind, working himself in slowly as he distracted him with his mouth on his throat and his shoulders and small nips to the dark, hardened little nipples and the muscles of his chest.

“You can tell me to stop…” he murmured, his mouth working at Clint’s ear.

“Don’t you fucking think about it,” Clint gasped, arching up against the heavy body above him. “Don’t stop…”

It should have hurt, he thought distractedly, but as Thor’s hips finally met his, his legs attempting to wrap around the sturdy waist, what he felt wasn’t pain. Instead, it was a strange but not unpleasant tingling, like a low current of electricity, and it wasn’t just in his arched and trembling lower body, but everywhere that Thor touched him: the hands on his sides, the lips against his throat, all tingled with a strange hot/cold sensation no words could describe, and then it was sending involuntary shudders up his spine, flashing lights in front of his eyes, humming in his ears. Thor was saying something, his voice breathless, but either he wasn’t speaking any language Clint knew or Clint wasn’t capable or thinking well enough to understand him. Finally a few words managed to get through to him.

“I can’t… am I hurting you?”

“No… not hurting me…”

He wasn’t sure exactly what he _was_ doing, but it didn’t hurt, and it didn’t matter, because he could hear in Thor’s voice he was close to the edge, and a moment later he wrapped a tingling hand around Clint’s cock and squeezed and stroked firmly until Clint thrust up into a release that left him stunned and wavering on the edge of awareness.

Fuck, he thought. Heart still beating. Still breathing. Warm, heavy body had rolled to lay alongside him, arms and legs wrapped around him, breath against his cheek. And a soft chuckle.

“Are you all right, little Hawk?”

“Umm…” he attempted, then shook his head and tried again. “Yeah. What…”

He glanced dazedly over at the face grinning back at him somewhat sheepishly.

“I’m sorry, friend. I don’t recall that happening before…”

“What? The… what the hell was that?”

Thor’s face reddened slightly. “I seem to have lost some control over my power to handle lightning…”

Clint blinked. “Were you giving me electric shocks?”

“I don’t know. Was it unpleasant?”

“Actually, no,” Clint admitted, trying to reassemble some coherent recollection of the last few minutes. “It was kind of… wow.”

Thor laughed. “I assume that’s good.”

“Yeah… wait. That doesn’t usually happen?”

Thor gave him a sideways glance. “No. It’s never happened before.”

“So what the hell… what’s what look for? Are you not telling me something? Is this some other fucked-up thing with Loki and…”

“No!” Thor said quickly, hearing the sudden change in Clint’s voice. “No. Nothing to do with that.”

“Then what was that look for?”

Thor pressed his lips together and looked away, and suddenly he looked so much like a high school boy trying to work up the nerve to ask a girl to prom that Clint burst out laughing.

“What?”

“I think I am just especially fond of you,” he admitted, with an embarrassed grin.

“I… oh,” Clint managed, because he wasn’t sure what else you could possibly say with those eyes and that face grinning at you like that and saying something like that.

“Is that bad?” he asked, his grin starting to fade.

“No,” Clint said. “I just…”

Thor laughed and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I don’t expect you to express any unusual degree of fondness for me, my friend. Although I would hope you at least like me.”

“Are you fucking kidding? After… that? Yes, I like you. You think I let just any random guy…”

“No, I don’t think that. I feel quite honored,” Thor said, rubbing a hand over his chest. “And yes, even if you are simply using me as an attempt to free yourself of thoughts of my brother, I am still honored.”

Clint felt a chill. Was that what he was doing? He looked back at Thor and thought for a moment before he answered.

“It’s partly that. But… it’s not only that.”

Thor smiled. “I’m glad. But… I think we broke the machine.”

“Machine…” he said, raising his hand to his head and glancing over at the EEG monitor. “Oh. Electricity. Shit.”

The laughter hit him and wouldn’t stop; he had to grasp at Thor’s arm to try to catch his breath.

“Oh, fuck. We electrocuted their brain scanner. That’s the most fucking hilarious… oh, shit. Imagine their faces…”

Thor tried to contain his own laughter. “They will be most displeased.”

“Yes,” Clint gasped, trying to get enough air between bursts of laughter. “They will be extremely fucking displeased.”

He was just starting to get the laughter under control several minutes later when there was a sharp, demanding knock at the door.

“What?” he shouted.

The voice was Tony’s. “What the hell is going on in there?”

“Is there a problem?” Thor asked innocently.

“Yes, there’s a fucking problem! What the hell did you two freaks do to my EEG machine?”

Clint snorted with laughter. “You sound a little tense, Tony. Have you tried shock therapy?”

Tony thumped his fist on the door again. “Don’t break anything else!”

“Or else you’ll do what?”

There was a moment of silence, and the voice from the other side of the door had a hint of resigned humor to it. “Fine. If you’re going to break anything else, can Bruce and I at least have the camera on for it this time?”

 

 

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint and Natasha discuss unhealthy coping skills. Thor provides some assistance, and Tony gets called in to help. Bruce thinks this is a very interesting idea.

Natasha walked into the living room in the morning and stopped, looking at the sofa, where a disheveled-looking Thor was stretched out and sound asleep, a plate of leftover Chinese food almost untouched on the coffee table beside him.

“This is different,” she said.

She jumped when Tony, who’d been behind the counter retrieving something from the bottom of the refrigerator, popped his head up.

“What. That?”

“Since when does Thor fall asleep when there’s food to eat? Actually… since when does Thor fall asleep, period?”

Tony shrugged, picking through a container of strawberries. “I dunno. Maybe Clint wore him out. You’d have to…”

“Wait,” she said, raising her hand. “Maybe Clint _wore him out_? Maybe _Clint_ wore him out?” What the hell… did… okay. Give me a second here. I’m going to assume you didn’t mean what I think you meant.”

“Oh, I meant exactly what you think I meant,” Tony said.

She rested the palm of her hand against her forehead. “Okay. Clint and _Thor_. And… really? What the hell?”

“Ask him about the EEG machine,” Bruce said, strolling past her on his way to the kitchen.

“Don’t ask me about the EEG machine,” Tony said quickly.

“You know what? I’m not going to,” she said. “I don’t think I want to know.”

Thor snorted and sat up, looking puzzled. “What… is it morning?”

“Yes, it’s morning,” Natasha said.

“Oh… but I got up to have a snack in the middle of the night, and… I must have fallen asleep?” he said, bewildered.

“You had a busy evening,” Tony said, biting into a strawberry. “These are good. Want some?”

“I got those for my cereal,” Bruce protested.

Tony shrugged and handed him the rest of the container. “It’s not like I ate all of them.”

“Wait, does that mean nobody’s been keeping an eye on Clint since the middle of the night?” Natasha asked.

The three men looked at each other.

“JARVIS would have told me if anything was going on,” Tony said.

“I think I’ll just go check on him anyway,” she said. “No offense, JARVIS.”

“None taken, Agent Romanov. And if it reassures you, I have been monitoring Agent Barton and he seems to have been sleeping normally. Of course, I can no longer conduct EEG monitoring…”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “All right. What happened to the EEG machine?”

“Ask Clint,” Tony suggested.

“I think I will.”

 

 

 

Clint didn’t exactly invite her in; it was more of a sleepy, questioning mumbling, but it didn’t sound like someone saying _not_ to come in, so Natasha pushed open the door and stepped in. Clint sat up in his tangle of blankets, blinking at her dazedly.

“Good morning.”

“Umm… morning.”

“Those wires all over your head are a nice look,” she said.

He reached up and scratched at the electrodes. “Yeah. They’re not working anyway. I guess the machine’s broken.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Want to explain how the machine got broken?”

“That depends. Who have you talked to so far this morning?”

“Who have I talked to that made _sense_ thing morning? Nobody. But I did run into Tony and Bruce in the kitchen… and Thor passed out on the couch with a midnight snack he fell asleep eating.”

“Oh.”

She smiled. “Were you wondering where he went?”

Clint rubbed his face. “I… no. I just woke up.”

“Busy evening?”

He flushed slightly. “Ummm… interesting evening?”

She hopped up and sat down on his dresser. “Interesting. Hmm. I’m not sure what to say about that. Except that I could ask if you’re really thinking that getting laid is going to fix what’s wrong in your head.”

Clint flopped back down on the pillow. “I knew that was coming.”

She slid down and sat down beside him on the bed. “Look, I’m allowed to be worried about you. You can’t tell me I’m not. You’re… I don’t have family. You’re the closest thing to it that I do have. And I know everybody here is looking out for you and trying to help, but if you think there’s anyone here that isn’t dealing with their own brand of crazy…”

“What’s your brand of crazy?” he asked, looking up at her.

“Paranoia,” she said. “Well, that and the complete inability to trust almost anyone.”

“I think those are actually normal, considering your career choices.”

“I trust you,” she said. “And I’m not going to let anyone hurt you… whether they mean to or not. And I’m not sure…”

Clint sat back up and looked over at her, shrugging his shoulders. “You’re not sure? I’m really not sure. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me. I lost a whole day yesterday and I don’t have any idea why except something about a seizure, which isn’t really reassuring… I think every wire in my head is crossed right now. I think one thing and it ends up somewhere else… I try not to think about things and they’re right in front of my face… I wake up and I’m not where I expected to be, or I try to wake up and I can’t, and…”

“Clint, maybe you do need to see some of the guys at S.H.I.E.L.D. They might know how to help you…”

“By putting me in a lockdown military psych unit?” he said sharply. “No thanks.”

“So you’re just going to see if fucking team members helps instead?”

He clenched his jaw and turned his face away from her. She sighed.

“Okay, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“You can say whatever you want,” he said quietly. “And really, you can think whatever you want, too. Everybody’s got things in their head they don’t want there. And I don’t know how you deal with yours, but… it feels good. All right? And if it’s laying awake thinking about that goddamn psychopath and the things he made me do, or falling asleep laying next to somebody who just wants to make me feel better and not think about anything…”

Natasha sighed. “I suppose it’d be a lie to pretend my coping skills are any better than yours… and at least yours involve some kind of connection with other people. The only way I know to deal with any of it is just to… lock it up somewhere in my head. With all the other things that are locked up in there. And just pretend it isn’t there, even if I know it is. And pretend I don’t wake up shaking at night, even though I do. And I can’t trust anybody enough to let them try to take some of that away from me, even for a little while. So I guess if Tony or Thor or anyone else can take some of yours from you, even if it’s just for a while, I can’t try to pretend I’ve got a better answer for you.”

He reached out and hooked an arm around her shoulder, squeezing her.

“Maybe you ought to think about trusting somebody to try and take some of those things away for you, you know.”

“I don’t think I’m capable of it. I’m a product of my training… I’m not sure I have the ability to relate to other people as anything except potential threats.”

“You don’t treat me like a potential threat,” he said.

“No,” she sighed. “I do trust you, Clint. I’ve trusted you with my life and I trust you enough to tell you things like this that I wouldn’t tell anyone else. But I can’t…”

“Look, there’s no way you and I are going to fix each other. We’re both too broken in too many of the same ways,” he said.

She laughed wryly. “I guess that’s pretty much it.”

“Well, I can’t tell you that anybody who isn’t cracked in some way is going to understand what either of us are dealing with. But the other guys here… they’re broken in their own ways, too. Just not the same way we are. So maybe… give them a chance, if you can.”

She rubbed her eyes. “Maybe eventually I will. But for the moment, just please take care of yourself, okay?”

“I can’t,” he said, holding out his hands. “I guess that’s why it feels so good to have someone else just take care of me for a little while.”

“I suppose I can understand that,” she said, kissing his forehead. “But if any of them hurt you, I’ll kill them. You know that, right?”

“Yeah. And so do they,” he said, smiling.

She pulled at the electrodes. “Are these glued to your head? Sadistic bastards. I’m not sure how you’re supposed to get them out.”

Clint glanced at her sheepishly. “I have a feeling I’ll have a volunteer to help me with them.”

“You figure on Thor showing back up here pretty soon?”

“He insisted he could get the glue out… said he’s used to untangling nasty stuff out of hair.”

“I’ll bet he is,” she muttered, smirking. “I won’t ask what kinds of stuff. Good luck with that.”

There was a knock at the door. Natasha grinned.

“That’s not Thor, is it?”

“Well, actually, it’s Steve.”

He opened the door and peered in. “I just wanted to stop in and make sure you were all right.”

Clint gestured vaguely at nothing. “Yeah… I’m fine.”

“What’s all over your head?”

“Apparently Tony and Bruce decided they needed to monitor my brain.”

“Lucky you,” Steve said, and Natasha muffled a giggle. “You’re feeling better now?”

“I’ll feel better once I get these things off my head, but yeah. And I could probably use something to eat, too… since I’ve apparently managed to lose a day and a half without knowing where it went…”

“I think you know where some of it went,” Natasha murmured, trying to hide a grin.

Steve glanced at her. “What? Is this another joke I should be getting?”

“No, sweetie,” she said, patting his arm. “I’m just giving Clint a hard time. Maybe we’ll let him take a shower and we’ll go down to the kitchen. I haven’t had breakfast yet. Clint… I’ll mention to Thor to bring you something, if he hasn’t eaten everything.”

“That’ll work,” Clint said, watching as the two walked to the door and noticing how Steve insisted politely on opening the door for Natasha and closing it behind her.

 

 

 

 

A bit later, there was a sound at the door that was more like a kick than a knock.

“Clint?”

He stumbled out of bed and opened the door to find Thor standing there with a large plate of food in each hand, beaming cheerfully.

“What’s that?”

“I persuaded Steve to make pancakes,” he said. “And there are eggs.”

“Who cooked them?” Clint asked suspiciously.

“Natasha.”

“All right, then.”

He stepped back, and Thor set the two plates down on the small table and sat down, motioning for Clint to join him.

“Sit. Eat. You’re hungry, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, I guess I am,” he said, as the smell of pancakes hit him and his stomach growled.

They ate in silence; there wasn’t any point in letting a good breakfast get cold with chit-chat, and the food tasted good enough to distract Clint from the fact that even though he’d gotten the wires detached from the electrodes on his head, the electrodes were still stubbornly attached. Thor must have noticed him scratching absently at his head.

“As soon as you’re finished eating, we can get to work getting those things off you.”

“How did you plan to do that?”

“Well, I asked Bruce, and he said a hot shower and some soap should help dissolve the glue, but it will still take some patience to get them off without pulling your hair out.”

“Ugh. Maybe I should just shave my head.”

 “I was hoping that perhaps I could assist you with the process… and perhaps distract you in the meantime.”

He gave Clint a look that momentarily sent all of his attention from his breakfast to his groin.

“Umm… that sounds like an option I could live with,” he said, shifting in his chair, “but I’m not sure I’m… completely up for a repeat of…”

Thor burst out laughing. “I didn’t assume you would be, little Hawk. You know, there are many ways for me to entertain you.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Clint said, slightly relieved; he’d been hoping that Thor hadn’t forgotten that ordinary human bodies didn’t recover from exertion (or other things) as quickly as the god’s did.

He finished the last of his breakfast while he heard Thor in the bathroom, humming contentedly to himself above the running water in the shower. When he stepped in, closing the door behind him, the mirror was already fogged and he could feel the steam from the shower. He tossed off his shorts and slid the glass door open just far enough to slip in without letting too much of the heat out. Thor was leaning against the tiled wall, naked and soaked and smiling, his blond hair dark and plastered over his shoulders. Clint had to take a moment to appreciate the view, which seemed to amuse his shower companion.

“Are you pleased with what you see?”

“I’m definitely not complaining.”

Thor chuckled and reached for a bar of soap. “Come here and let’s see what we can do with this glue.”

Clint stepped closer, under the running water, and Thor took him by the shoulders and turned him around so that his back was to the bigger man. He wasn’t sure exactly what Thor had in mind, but the next thing to touch him was a pair of soapy hands working through his wet hair.

“Relax, and tell me if I pull too hard,” Thor said, and Clint could feel the large but surprisingly gentle fingers rubbing at the glue stuck to his hair and scalp, gradually loosening it.

After a minute he did relax, the hot water fall over him and Thor’s fingers steadily massaging his head, and his mind drifted absently to the other things he’d recently discovered that those strong fingers were capable of doing to him, and the muscular, naked body that was just inches behind him, maintaining a well-mannered distance. He leaned back just a bit and found himself resting against the other man’s broad chest, which was extremely comfortable, especially since Thor merely made an approving sound and kept working on his hair.

“You are aware of what having you leaning on me like that is going to do to me,” Thor said conversationally.

“I’m aware what it’s doing to me…” Clint muttered, floating somewhere between blissfully comfortable and pleasantly turned on.

“Hmm. Lean your head back so I can reach these on your forehead.

He let his head fall back against Thor’s sturdy shoulder, and the fingers were rubbing at his temples and forehead. He glanced down at the pile of ruined electrodes on the floor of the shower, then closed his eyes again.

“I think that’s all of them,” Thor said, and his fingers were now working down the sides of Clint’s neck and over his shoulders, and as the soap rinsed away, his mouth began to follow his fingers, hot enough to make the water feel a few degrees colder.

“Do you feel better?”

“Mmm-hmm,” Clint murmured, letting himself drift.

 

 

 

 

There was a snap of awareness as he realized he had drifted too far. His mind whipped back to alertness, but his realized it was all going to hell again; it was like waking up from the nightmares, paralyzed and fighting for air, except that he wasn’t waking up. He couldn’t wake up. He was still dimly aware of the bathroom and the shower and the hot water and Thor’s hands on him, but his next breath refused to pull any air into his lungs, and he felt the water turn scalding as his skin went suddenly ice-cold. He could hear Thor’s alarmed tone, felt the broad arms catch him around the chest as his legs went out from under him, but he couldn’t force himself to respond, couldn’t rouse himself from this helpless, frozen state. His head started to spin as he tried and failed to gasp for breath. Part of him, the part that still knew Thor had him and could hear his voice, knew that in reality he _was_ breathing, even if it was only in sharp gasps, but in this numbed panic it didn’t feel like enough air.

He realized the water was gone and heard the bathroom door open, vaguely aware of Thor and JARVIS exchanging a discussion his brain was too far gone to catch any of. Then he felt the soft carpet of his room under his back and a towel briskly rubbing over him, and Thor talking to him. He thought to himself that Thor was probably assuming he broke him somehow and absently wished he could reassure him, but the room was spinning and his eyes wouldn’t open, and he still felt like there was no air in his lungs, although he was distantly aware that if he really had stopped breathing, he wouldn’t still be conscious to think about it. He tried to keep thinking; it seemed to be keeping him on this side of the line, and the other side was going away to a place he really didn’t want to be. He tried to listen to whatever Thor was saying, especially when he realized Thor wasn’t the only one talking to him anymore. He forced himself to concentrate. It sounded like Tony.

It was definitely Tony, because Tony might not be the master of social sensitivity, but he knew some things about being human and about having places in your head you didn’t want to go that Thor probably didn’t. And Tony was in his face, talking loudly, sharply, making sure Clint heard him.

“Hey! I know you can hear me. I can tell from your face you’re not gone like you were before. Come on… out of it.”

Clint listened, tried to follow the words back toward where he wanted to be. He tried to breathe again and this time got a deep gasp that filled his chest with air and slowed the spinning around him.

“Good. This is good. See? You can fight this, right?”

He demanded that his eyes open and was slightly surprised when they actually did. Tony’s face was directly over his, watching him, and he grinned.

“Hi, there. Welcome back.”

“Is he all right?” Thor asked, and that was when Clint realized his head was resting on Thor’s crossed legs, with strong hands holding his head.

“He’s fine,” Tony said, not looking away. “You’re fine. You held on this time. You’re okay, aren’t you?”

Clint didn’t quite have the breath back to speak, but he could nod, and when he did, he found himself faced with Thor’s relieved grin.

“I thought I did something to harm you.”

Tony glanced at him suspiciously. “Why? What were you doing?”

“Nothing… yet.”

Clint was starting to find that a sheepish and slightly chagrined Thor was probably the funniest version, as well as probably the most endearing. He took another deep breath and looked up at him.

“If you think you can do that to me just by rubbing soap on my head…”

Thor laughed. “Perhaps the soap had some strange effect on you…”

“Do I want to know what you two were doing?” Tony asked.

“All we’d gotten to so far was getting off all those stupid things Bruce stuck to my head.”

Tony shook his head and sat back, but Clint still had those gray eyes fixed on him, and that was unreasonably distracting, especially since he was now thinking about what Clint and Thor might have been doing if they hadn’t gotten interrupted.

“Is this going to keep happening?” Clint asked quietly.

“I hope not,” Tony said. “Bruce seems to think that Loki basically short-circuited all the normal balances and feedback loops in your head, but not in any kind of permanent way… he said he thinks you’re just still putting everything back together and un-crossing all the crossed wires.”

“I wish the bastard had left me alone,” Clint said, finally looking away. “This isn’t any type of fucking fun.”

Thor frowned and tugged him up enough to wrap his arms around Clint’s shoulders. “It will stop. You’re strong. You can fight it.”

Clint shook his head, and part of him wanted to tell them that he didn’t feel in the least bit strong or in control of anything whatsoever, least of all his own brain, but he couldn’t manage the words. Tony started to draw back, and Clint didn’t even realize his hand was moving until it shot out and clenched around a handful of Tony’s shirt, his fingers brushing the hard surface of the arc reactor beneath it.

“Are you okay?” Tony asked.

“Stay.”

He hadn’t meant to say it. At least, he hadn’t _planned_ to say it. But he was starting to realize that at the moment, the thinking part of his brain was still reeling and struggling for balance, but there was another part of his brain that seemed quite certain what it wanted and needed. He had a sudden recollection of what Natasha had said and what he’d told her, and maybe it wasn’t exactly the kind of coping skill that your average self-help book recommended, but the kind of fucked-up that he was didn’t really fit your average self-help book anyway.

Tony blinked at him and looked down at the hand that was clutching his shirt, then up at Thor, who was watching him silently, still holding Clint tightly against his chest.

And then Tony’s phone rang.

“Shit,” he said, grabbing for it to shut it off, but then he saw who was calling. “It’s Bruce. He probably wants to know if you’re okay. Let me talk to him for just a minute… I swear, I’ll be right back.”

Clint reluctantly let go of his shirt, and Tony slid back until his back was against the wall, only then realizing that he was breathing harder than he should be, and that it really, really should be illegal for anything to turn him on as much as Clint’s hand grabbing his shirt like that had.

“Bruce.”

“I’m in the lab, and I heard JARVIS call you, so I pulled up the camera. Clint’s okay?”

“I think he’s a little scrambled, but yeah. He’s okay.”

Tony had decided not to mention to Bruce that Tony was not at all okay, but the tone of Bruce’s voice when he spoke again did nothing to help him settle down any; it was a low-pitched tone aimed directly for the part of his body he was already trying to ignore.

“Does he want what it looks like he wants?”

“Ummm… I don’t know? But it’s not…”

“Tony?”

“Yeah?”

“Some people talk through what’s going on in their heads. I don’t think Clint’s one of those people. Some people don’t talk about what’s going on in their heads, so instead of talking about it they either fight it out of their system or fuck it out, and I don’t think you want to spar with him right now.”

Tony chewed on his lip. “So you’re saying…”

“I want to watch.”

Oh, fuck. That was _not_ what he had expected to hear. It was possibly the _last_ thing he’d expected to hear.

“Excuse me. Did you just say…”

“You heard me,” Bruce said, his voice low and oddly determined. “I. Want. To. Watch. I want you to fuck him and I want to watch.”

Tony closed his eyes and tried to fight off the barrage of images and thoughts that were attacking him and making it incredibly difficult to figure out if any part of this was a good idea, or if he was even awake and not having a bizarre dream.

“Oh,” he managed unsteadily. “I…”

“And then… I want you to go take a shower, and then I want you to come find me in the lab. You got all that?”

Tony tried to think. Did he have all that? Not really. But Bruce had hung up.

Thor was looking at him curiously. “Are you all right? You look… very confused.”

“Umm… yeah. Slightly confused.”

“What did Dr. Banner have to say?” Thor asked.

“Stuff. You know. Science stuff.”

He leaned back against the wall. Thor gave Clint a shake.

“You know, the bed is an improvement in comfort over the floor.”

“You’re the one who put me on the floor,” Clint murmured, but he seemed more than willing to let himself be hauled to his feet. He shook himself, stretched his arms, shifted his weight. “It’s okay. It’s coming back a lot faster than it did before. Umm… can I please have one of those towels?”

Thor laughed and handed Clint a towel, which he wrapped around his waist. Having gotten that far, he seemed to lose track of what he had planned to do next; he stood, slightly unsteady on his feet, looking blankly at Thor.

“Come here, little Hawk,” Thor said, and pulled him to the bed and down, nestling himself against the pillows and the headboard and tucking Clint securely against his chest. Clint let himself be pulled in, but he opened his eyes and caught Tony’s from across the room with a look that completely disabled the control he was attempting to regain.

“Are you coming back?” he asked.

Tony stumbled to his feet. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“No,” Clint said. “Nothing I do is _ever_ a good idea. Haven’t you figured that out by now?”

Thor chuckled and rubbed Clint’s damp, dark blond hair. “You didn’t seem to do him any harm last time. And I don’t think he’s really in proper condition for me to…”

Tony raised an eyebrow.

“I seem to lack some degree of self-control when it comes to our Hawk.”

“It seems like you’re not the only one,” Tony said, because his feet were already walking him toward the bed, and his hands were already pulling his shirt over his head, and part of his brain was already thinking about getting his loose jeans off over his bare feet as one of his hands found his belt.

“I don’t want to make everything worse…” he said.

“You know, pretty much everything that’s supposed to make things worse seems to be exactly what I think I need,” Clint said, looking up at him as Tony kicked his jeans into the corner and climbed onto the bed. Before he could react, Thor had reached over Clint’s shoulder and grasped his arm and abruptly pulled him off-balance, leaving him sprawled across the tangle of Thor and Clint’s legs. He sat up and turned toward Thor to protest this treatment, but instead he was caught entirely off guard by Clint’s hand tangling in his hair as he arched up and pulled him down for a kiss.

This was _definitely_ not fair, or anything close to fair, because he was supposed to be thinking rationally here, and instead he had Clint naked underneath him on the bed, legs hooking over his to pull him in, and to make matters worse he had Thor’s hand running along his jaw as if encouraging him.

“I should really not be here…” he managed.

“Do you not want to be here?” Thor asked.

Tony looked down at Clint and there was something electric and demanding and hopeful and confused all at once in those eyes.

“I want to be here. I just don’t know if I’m supposed to be.”

“I fail to understand your concern,” Thor said, amused. “Besides, if Dr. Banner thought it was an unwise idea, he wouldn’t have instructed you to proceed.”

“I’m not sure Dr. Banner is thinking with his… wait, you could hear that?”

“Of course I could.”

Clint glanced at him. “Hear what?”

Thor leaned over and spoke with his mouth against Clint’s ear, sending a shiver through him that Tony could feel.

“Dr. Banner thinks that Tony should stay. In fact, Dr. Banner thinks Tony should please you… and Dr. Banner thinks he should watch.”

Clint cocked his head and glanced at the camera. “Bruce is watching?”

“Umm… he might be. Unless you tell JARVIS to shut off the camera.”

Clint contemplated for a moment, but whether there was someone watching the scene on a little screen in another part of the building seemed completely and utterly irrelevant with Tony between his legs and Thor’s chest against his back, and both their hands on him, and his cock hardened to almost painful demand between his body and Tony’s.

“Fuck it. Let him watch,” he murmured. “Just do something. Please.”

 

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short part. Tony, Thor, and Clint finish what they started. Pretty much straight smut, but next chapter is for Bruce and Tony and I wanted to give them their own.

“I like it when he says, ‘please’,” Thor said, giving Tony a smirk.

“Fuck off,” Clint muttered, squirming.

“You’re way too comfortable with this,” Tony said, looking up at Thor. “Is this how you guys do things in Asgard?”

Thor shrugged. “Usually we invite more than just three people… and we usually invite the women too. They become very annoyed if we don’t.”

“I’ll bet they do,” Tony said, as Clint dug a heel into the back of his thigh. Out of the corner of his eye he caught Thor reaching for the nightstand, but at the same time he had also managed to maneuver his legs under Clint’s. Clint made a semi-coherent and not very genuine sound of protest when Thor shifted himself and pulled Clint into his lap, his knees forcing Clint’s legs apart and letting Tony slide conveniently closer, so that this time when Clint grabbed at him and pulled him in for a kiss, their bodies were pressed together, and Clint whined against Tony’s lips and thrust his cock against him.

“Impatient?” Tony asked, before Clint’s head fell back and Tony took the opportunity to go for the sensitive skin of his throat.

“Fuck…” Clint gasped, and Tony felt his body jerk and tighten underneath him as Clint’s eyes closed and his head snapped back hard against Thor’s shoulder. Wondering what it took to get a reaction like that out of Clint, Tony glanced down and discovered that while Thor was still contently watching them and working his mouth along Clint’s jaw, he had also apparently managed to retrieve the lube from the nightstand, since it was now tossed aside on the bed and two of Thor’s sturdy fingers were busily at work, buried up to the knuckle.

For a moment Tony’s brain locked on that, because it was hard to think about much else watching Thor patiently fucking Clint with his fingers while Clint moaned and twisted in the grip of the strong arm across his chest, breathing hard.

“This… is so not fair…” Clint exhaled.

“You like it,” Thor murmured, licking the edge of his ear.

“I need…”

Thor chuckled and twisted his fingers, and Clint shouted something that wasn’t a word and arched up hard against Tony. “This isn’t enough, little Hawk?”

“No… I need… please. Tony…”

Thor smiled and obligingly withdrew his fingers, making Clint shiver. He looked over Clint’s shoulder at Tony and raised his eyebrows.

There really wasn’t much more of an invitation needed than that. It would be a lie to say he hadn’t spent the last few days, after last time, thinking about what it would be like to feel that wiry archer’s body under him while he fucked him, but whatever he’d been thinking, this was infinitely better. It might have been the reassurance of Thor’s steady grip and whatever he was whispering in Clint’s ear, or just the sheer heat and friction of being pressed between the two bodies, but Clint was just _gone_ , completely surrendered and seemingly beyond awareness of anything beyond his body. As Tony pressed into him he simply arched up to accommodate him, letting Tony press his knees apart and back, one hand gripping tightly at Thor’s arm over his chest and the other digging fingers into Tony’s shoulder as he slid in, closed his eyes and let himself be blinded for a moment by the heat and tightness.

“That’s good,” Thor murmured, and Tony found that as he reached for something to brace himself, what he discovered was his hands on Thor’s broad chest. He could feel the rumble of amusement beneath his palms. “Yes. Very good.”

Clint’s legs twined around Tony and his hand went from Tony’s shoulder to his ass and grabbed, hard, trying to pull him deeper. Tony was far past the point of being able to hold back and tease him even if he’d wanted to; he thrust into him hard, drew back and thrust again, feeling Clint’s body tighten around his cock with each thrust, hearing the breathless sounds he made.

Then Thor shifted his legs under Clint, lifting his hips so that Tony’s next thrust hit him exactly where he would feel it the most. Clint gasped and dug his fingers hard into Thor’s arm.

“Oh, fuck… that’s not fair… I can’t…”

“I’ll let you go as soon as you tell me to,” Thor murmured.

“Fuck… I can’t stand this…”

But nothing even remotely close to “let go” or “stop” or anything else left his mouth, and every time Tony slammed into that spot Clint instinctively tried to draw back from the intensity of it, but Thor had him pinned in place and allowed no escape. Tony could feel Clint shudder and writhe against him with each thrust, could feel the man’s body shaking helplessly as he gasped for breath, trapped between them and at their mercy.

“Should we let him come?” Thor asked.

When Tony didn’t answer, Clint forced his eyes open, glazed and dark and intense, and glared at him.

“If you say no, I’ll fucking kill you.”

Tony couldn’t manage to answer, but Thor got the idea and slid his hand between the two bodies, finding Clint’s cock, slick and desperate. Clint moaned and Tony felt his body jump at the contact, and then Thor was stroking him as he rubbed his thumb over the head of his cock, and Clint cried out as Tony felt wet heat spread between them as Clint’s body tightened almost painfully around him, Clint’s heels digging into his thighs, and the room flashed away into whiteness as he surrendered, vaguely hearing his own long moan as he buried his face in Clint’s shoulder.

They stayed like this for a long minute, Thor petting both Tony’s and Clint’s hair and looking pleased with himself. Finally, Tony regained some degree of functioning cognitive ability and sat back.

“Well. I… yeah.”

Clint glanced up at him lazily and grinned. “Did we actually manage to shut Tony Stark up?”

“It’s temporary. Happens when my head explodes,” Tony said. “Are you all right?”

“I would be if _someone_ would let go of me,” he said, elbowing Thor, who chuckled and held up his hands. Instead of pulling free, though, Clint just slumped back more comfortably against the bigger man’s sturdy chest and settled in.

“You sure you’re all right?”

“Do you always worry this much about people you sleep with?” Clint asked.

“No. But most of the people I sleep with aren’t psychologically unstable and recovering from unknown physiological and neurological damage…”

“I’d argue that anyone who sleeps with you is probably psychologically unstable,” Clint said, and yawned. Thor wrapped an arm around him and pulled him in, and Clint rolled slightly into the perfect spot this made for his head against Thor’s shoulder.

“You may have a point,” Tony said, as he suddenly noticed one of the cameras and remembered what Bruce had said. “That does seem to be my type.”

“You don’t have a type. You’re _their_ type. The crazies,” Clint said.

“What does that say about you?”

“That I’m a fucking nut job. Have you _read_ my file?”

Thor chuckled and rubbed Clint’s head. “At least you don’t have wires glued to you anymore. If Dr. Banner attempts to do that again, I may have to protest.”

“If he attempts to do that again and I’m actually conscious this time, I’ll kick his ass,” Clint muttered.

“Yeah. For the four or five seconds it takes for the Hulk to take over and turn you into pudding,” Tony said.

“I’d be more worried about him turning _you_ into pudding, if I were you,” Clint said, grinning. “After all… do you really know what’s going to happen if you get Bruce… worked up? I mean, if he was watching that, he might be down there in Hulk mode trying to fuck your lab equipment.”

“I can reassure you,” JARVIS said, “that Dr. Banner is in his normal human state and the lab equipment is undamaged.”

“So far,” Clint snickered.

“What makes you think I’m…” Tony tried to protest.

“Oh, come on. It wasn’t the two of us he was asking to watch,” Clint said, pointing over his shoulder at Thor and aiming a lazy kick at Tony. He missed completely, yawned again, and settled back against Thor’s chest.

Tony was surprised to find that his brain refused to come up with anything to say in response to this, and by the time it started to formulate a response that even made sense to him, Clint’s eyes had drifted closed and he was starting to slump in Thor’s arms, slipping into slumber.

“You’re more than welcome to stay here with us and nap for a while,” Thor said, gesturing to the spot on the bed next to the two of them.

“Nah. I don’t think I’m really necessary at this point in the game,” Tony said, and somehow he felt just fine about that. Besides, he wasn’t sure it was a good idea to waste time, not with Bruce waiting for him.

Bruce. Watching him fuck Clint like that. And now sitting down in the lab, waiting for him. Just hearing Bruce’s voice in his head saying, “I want to watch” was starting to scramble his thoughts again, and then he started thinking about what the whole thing had looked like from Bruce’s angle, and oh, fuck… he was a long way from still being a teenager but that thought was enough to make his cock twitch already.

“Off with you, then,” Thor said, his tone companionable but low enough not to wake the man sleeping against his chest. “Have fun.”

“I don’t… yeah. I’d tell you to take care of him, but it doesn’t look like I have to.”

Thor smiled. “I will look out for him. And I know the entire team is ready to come to his aid if he needs any of them.”

“Definitely,” Tony said. “Except that I can’t promise what you’ll get if you call for me or Bruce for the next couple of hours.”

“I highly doubt we’ll have any cause to disturb you,” Thor said. “When Natasha stops by to see if we’ve managed to do anything terrible yet, I’ll tell her if we need anything.”

“Yeah. Wait till someone mentions ‘threesome’ to her and watch her head explode,” Tony said, hoping he could be there to see her face but hidden behind something bulletproof when she heard about it.

 

 

He closed the door behind him and walked toward the elevator, heading for his room and a shower and wondering why it seemed sort of unfair that he couldn’t remember ever falling asleep in someone’s arms looking as perfectly content and secure as Clint had. Maybe it was the whole thing about Thor being a god and being able to break anything that tried to touch him, but somehow Tony didn’t think that was it. After all, Thor hadn’t been able to protect him from Loki and everything else that came with Loki. That didn’t seem to matter at this point, though…

He was drying off after his shower, and still trying to chase down scattered thoughts and assemble them into something coherent, when it finally connected in his head that Clint might possibly have a point about Bruce and the Hulk. He wondered if Bruce had tried anything like this since his little gamma ray experiment. From what he’d said before, Tony had a suspicion that Bruce had _not_ tried anything like this since then. Which meant that he was even less sure what he was getting into than he’d been before.

“JARVIS? What are the changes of accidentally triggering one of Dr. Banner’s transformations under certain circumstances? Like, you know…”

“Dr. Banner has already taken the precaution of procuring a tranquilizer gun in the event that should occur,” JARVIS said.

“Why do we have a tranquilizer gun?”

“S.H.I.E.L.D. has several of them located at various places in the building, sir, all of them with specially designed darts that will pierce the Hulk’s skin with enough force to inject the tranquilizer. I believe everyone was briefed on this quite thoroughly…”

Tony scowled. “I was so hung-over that morning I was wishing they would shoot me with the tranquilizers.”

He tossed his towel on the bed and reached for a pair of jeans. He’d expected that having the entire team living in one place would make life considerably weirder. He really hadn’t ever considered that he would be heading off for an anticipated sexual encounter where the definition of “using protection” was being ready to put a high-powered animal tranquilizer dart in your partner’s neck. Oh, well.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce and Tony figure some things out.

Somehow, Tony figured that Bruce would be waiting for him, but when he walked into the lab, there was no one in sight, and most of the lights were dimmed. He listened for a moment, but it was hard to hear anything over the hum and buzz of various computers and machines.

“Hello?” he called.

“Dr. Banner is working and is wearing hearing protection. Would you like me to notify him that you’ve arrived?” JARVIS asked.

“Umm, sure. What the hell is he doing?”

“I don’t know, sir. I’m sure you can ask him.”

He waited impatiently, shifting his feet, and after a few minutes Bruce walked out from among the machines, lights automatically brightening as they sensed motion. He certainly didn’t appear to be in a hurry, and Tony could smell the sharp, burning, metallic odor on his flannel shirt that came from welding. There were a few small burn holes in the front of the shirt, but that didn’t surprise Tony much; he had plenty of shirts that looked like that.

“What are you working on?” he asked.

Bruce shrugged. “I have no idea.”

“Then what were you welding?”

“Just random pieces of metal. Couldn’t manage to concentrate on much, for some reason.”

He gave Tony a lopsided smile. Tony shook his head.

“You were just welding random pieces of metal together?”

“Yeah. It was something to do.”

The thought suddenly popped into Tony’s head: _How did you like your personal porn flick?_ He decided not to say it.

Bruce glanced at the bank of monitors that displayed input from the building’s cameras.

“Apparently Thor makes a nice pillow.”

“Apparently he’s had a lot of experience playing cruise director for naked fun times,” Tony said.

Bruce snickered. “Is that how they do things in Asgard?”

“He said the girls get mad if they’re not invited.”

“Huh. Thor, God of Thunder, Professional Orgy Manager. Wonder if he has any other titles we should know about?”

“I don’t know. Is ‘professional sex therapist’ a thing?”

“In some states, but you have to be licensed,” Bruce said. “Besides, weren’t you in there playing therapist too?”

“I never said I had anything therapeutic to offer,” Tony said. “Besides, you’re the one who said Clint’s not the kind of guy who thinks about things; he just does things.”

“And then there’s those of us who think way too much,” Bruce muttered, leaning back against one of the desks. He glanced up at Tony. “They knew I was watching?”

“Well, since Thor apparently has superhuman hearing…”

“No, it’s OK. Thor doesn’t seem to worry much about anything, and Clint didn’t seem like he cared at that point…”

“I think Clint’s still trying to deal with what’s right in front of his face at the moment,” Tony said. “Somebody in another room with a camera might as well be on another planet. Is he going to be OK?”

Bruce shrugged. “I have no idea. Honestly, the guy was borderline self-destructive _before_ Loki got to him… if he was an office worker instead of a special ops agent, he’d have been diagnosed with a serious mental health disorder a long time ago… but that’s why he does what he does. Have you seen his files? He takes missions nobody will take. He takes missions that are off the table because they’re not considered survivable. So I guess it depends on how self-destructive he’s going to be now.”

“I don’t think Thor intends to put up with that,” Tony said.

“Clint’s a professional.”

“Thor’s a deity.”

“You have a point,” Bruce conceded.

“And apparently thunder and lightning aren’t the only activity he has some experience with being in charge of,” Tony added.

Bruce looked at something on the desk and shuffled his feet. “Yeah. I noticed that.”

Tony’s brain was willing to keep playing until Bruce got around to whatever he wanted to say, but his mouth decided to jump ahead of the game.

“So you watched.”

Silence for a moment.

“You know I did,” Bruce muttered.

“Well?”

“What do you mean, ‘well’?”

“I mean… you wanted to watch. You watched. Did it do anything for you?”

Something in Tony’s brain attempted to tell his mouth to stop talking, but was briskly overridden by his libido, which agreed with his mouth that it was time to get on with things.

“Did it _do_ anything for me?” Bruce said, turning slightly red. “Are you serious? I had to go melt big chunks of metal together because that was the only thing that required enough attention to keep me from replaying every single second of it in my head while I waited for you. OK?”

Tony grinned. “Are you replaying it in your head now?”

“Yes,” Bruce admitted, refusing to look at him.

“Well, you know, you might as well… oof!”

He had turned to look toward the monitors and was not expecting Bruce to be capable of moving as fast as he just had, but somehow he was slammed back against the wall by the door, strong hands gripping his shoulders and a kiss forceful enough to knock every other thought out of his head. The smell of Bruce and burned metal filled his senses, and his hands came up to grab for the other man’s waist, pulling him closer, if it was possible to get any closer.

“That’s more…”

“Shut up, Tony,” Bruce said, and made sure he did by keeping his mouth extremely busy for another long minute before they both had to breathe.

“No smart-ass remarks…” Tony promised, hands moving from Bruce’s waist to his hips.

“Good,” Bruce said. “Because…”

Then he was drawing back, and Tony scowled and tugged at him. “No, no, no. Stay right where you are. What?”

“This isn’t going to be… I don’t want to just be… a thing. Another one of your things,” he said quietly. “I’d… pretty much given up on finding anyone who could deal with me, and that was _before_ the Other Guy got involved in the picture. My work… the way I am… to normal people it’s not...”

“No one has ever accused me of being normal,” Tony said.

“I know. And I think your brain may actually work sort of like mine does… and I’ve never found anybody like that before. So I’m not… I don’t want to fuck this up. And in my personal experience, that’s what I do with things like this. I mean… not that… I’m not going to pretend I really have any experience with other guys, but as far as things with women go, in my experience it’s usually messy, short, and regrettable.”

“Look, you know I don’t do this whole concept of ‘normal relationship’ very well…”

“I don’t either,” Bruce said. “So… can we figure something else out? I mean, not right this second. Just… can we figure something out where this isn’t just another mess I wish I hadn’t made?”

“As long as you don’t expect me to behave like a normal human being, there’s definitely a chance we can figure something out,” Tony said. “But I have to tell you… the only way anything’s going to get figured out right at this moment is if we go somewhere with a bed and a door that locks and that half the team doesn’t have an override code for… and we figure some things out from there.”

Bruce grinned. “Subtlety, Tony. It’s one of the things I like about you.”

“Oh, come on. Tell me you don’t want to go down to my room and take clothes off.”

“Didn’t say that,” Bruce said, eyes shifting uneasily. “Just…”

“What?”

“I don’t… I don’t really know… I mean, I don’t even think I’ve ever gotten the hang of it with women, all things considered… haven’t had a lot of practice…”

“That,” Tony said confidently, “is definitely something that we can work on.”

“I don’t feel like you turning around and being an asshole if…”

“Bruce?”

“Yeah?”

“I try really, really hard to be an asshole… but I’ve been doing a lousy job of it lately. So give me a chance, and maybe I’ll fuck it up and continue ruining my asshole reputation, all right?”

Bruce chuckled. “All right. Let’s go, then, before somebody shows up down here and wants us to do something else.”

Tony turned toward the door, but stopped as he saw Bruce reach for a table and pick up something Tony hadn’t noticed before, something that looked like a cross between a paintball gun and a high-tech assault weapon.

“Is that the tranquilizer gun?” he asked. “It looks vicious.”

“It has to be,” Bruce said, his smile fading. “It’s got to fire darts at a high enough pressure to penetrate through to the muscle… can’t just lodge in the skin, or the tranquilizer will have a delayed effect, or no effect. A shot to the neck or some other place where the skin isn’t as thick…”

“I’m _not_ shooting you with that,” Tony said.

“Would be best, but take whatever shot you can get. It should work. But you’ll only have about…”

“I’m _NOT_ shooting you with that.”

“Three to five minutes,” Bruce continued, ignoring him.

Tony finally stopped and frowned. “Is that the longest they can put the Hulk out for?”

“No,” Bruce said, holding the tranquilizer gun toward Tony, who looked at with raised eyebrows and refused to touch it. “They could put the Hulk out for a while. The problem is that the amount of tranquilizer it takes to put the Hulk out is about two hundred times more than it would take to put Dr. Banner in respiratory and cardiac arrest.”

Tony stared at the ugly-looking weapon. “Okay, now I’m _really_ not shooting you with that.”

“That’s why it’s short-acting,” Bruce said. “The theory is that even if I started to transform back as soon as the tranquilizer started working, by the time I had actually returned to my normal body mass, it should already be wearing off, and hopefully wouldn’t kill me.”

“ _Hopefully_? And you let these things in my building and you told them to shoot you with them?” Tony demanded, horrified. “No. Leave that here.”

Bruce sighed. “The Other Guy could show up, Tony, and he might decide to kill you. He knows some of what I know, like I told you, but he doesn’t understand all of it, and he doesn’t care about a lot of it.”

“I don’t care. I’d rather take the risk that the Hulk might decide to kill me than shoot you with something that definitely might kill you.”

“It wouldn’t be me you were shooting,” Bruce said.

“Yes, it would,” Tony argued. “Put the fucking thing down. And I don’t want to see it again. Ever. If it’s going to be in the lab, put it the fuck away and let JARVIS know where it is.”

Bruce looked at him carefully for a moment, then set down the gun. “JARVIS, will you have one of the bots put this in one of the secured cabinets?”

There was a distinct moment of hesitation from the AI.

“Mr. Stark, are you aware…”

“Just do it, JARVIS,” Tony said sharply, grabbing Bruce by the arm and tugging him toward the door. “Oh, and before I forget… anything from any of the cameras in the vicinity of my room for the next twelve hours goes directly into my personal file and not into the regular video storage system.”

“You don’t want me to turn the cameras off, sir?” JARVIS asked, and Tony swore there was a distinct note of something like sarcasm in his tone.

“Aren’t you supposed to just do what I tell you?”

“You designed and programmed me, Mr. Stark.”

“So why does my own design argue with me?”

“Because you do not follow the protocols you established within the design framework,” JARVIS replied.

“Is it my imagination, or did he just sound smug?” Tony asked.

Bruce raised an eyebrow. “Is he supposed to be capable of that?”

“No,” Tony said, scowling. “But he does it anyway. Come on.”

 

 

Bruce looked around at the bare walls of Tony’s room; other than the size of the room and the bigger bed, it didn’t look much different from anyone else’s.

“Not big on decorating?”

“I’m only in here when I sleep in my bed, and you know how often that happens,” Tony said. “I’m actually so used to the cots in the lab that sleeping in a bed feels sort of weird. And it’s not like I just sit and read a book or something, you know? I mean, I read things when I’m working, but they’re… you know…”

“Tony?”

“Yeah?”

“You can stop.”

Tony blinked. “Oh. Right. Sorry. I don’t really… damn. I’m going to start doing it again.”

“Would it shut you up if I kissed you again?”

“Umm… yes. That would absolutely shut me up. Temporarily. Mph!”

Bruce had apparently decided that shutting Tony up was an important task, because he got to work on it immediately. And why was he so much stronger than Tony had expected him to be? He hadn’t realized that there was so much energy under the skin and the calm exterior, but now that energy was pushing him backward toward the bed with one of Bruce’s hands in his hair and the other one around his waist, steering him. And the mouth on his was more demanding than he had expected, but that was a good thing, because Tony was ready to meet him with equal demand and Tony was strong too; stronger than most people figured. So when he hooked his arms around Bruce and rolled them both hard down onto the bed, Bruce made a slightly surprised sound against Tony’s mouth, but didn’t let go.

“Really… way, way too many clothes,” Tony said, and immediately went for the buttons on Bruce’s shirt. “Actually, you know what? Here.”

He slid back and pulled his own shirt over his head, tossed it aside, kicked off his shoes, and then turned back to Bruce.

“Come on, now. Don’t tell me you’re going to change your mind.”

Bruce grinned. “Actually, I was enjoying watching you strip. I’ve never seen anyone do it that fast before.”

“Well, I’m in a hurry,” Tony said, yanking at Bruce’s clothes. “Take them off.”

Bruce chuckled, and very deliberately removed his shoes, socks, shirt, undershirt, setting them all neatly on the chair next to the bed. Tony rolled his eyes and fidgeted impatiently.

“I don’t know why you’re so antsy,” Bruce said. “You’re the one who got laid an hour ago.”

“Oh? How long’s it been for you?”

Bruce’s smile faded. “Long time. Years? Definitely years.”

“Shit,” Tony said. “That’s even more reason for you to be in a little bit more of a fucking hurry, you know.”

He decided to move the process along and went for the fastenings of Bruce’s pants, but Bruce swatted his hands away. Tony bounced impatiently on the bed.

“Are you doing this on purpose?”

“Yes.”

“Just to piss me off?”

“No. Only half to piss you off. The other half,” he said, finally pulling his pants and shorts off and watching Tony as he did, “is because I’m possibly just slightly nervous.”

“Oh,” Tony said, sitting back. It hadn’t really occurred to him that there might be a reason other than pissing him off. “What are you nervous about?”

Bruce laughed uneasily. “Hmm. About being naked in bed with another man? Or about the fact that I really don’t know what I’m doing? Or about the possibility of waking up an hour from now and finding out the Other Guy has decided to show up and trash the place?”

“Well, the last part we can worry about later. And the rest of it… not really relevant, is it, since you’re already here, and you seem to be doing fine so far? In fact, the whole grabbing and shoving against the wall and kissing thing was definitely along the right lines, and it doesn’t really…”

“That worked, did it?”

“Umm… yes. Definitely worked. So…”

He had not realized that Bruce would be so quick to take him up on his suggestion, but before he could finish his sentence, or even decide where it was going, he was abruptly grabbed by the shoulders and flipped firmly onto his back and shoved down into the mattress and kissed until there weren’t any more words left in his head.

“Sort of like that?”

“Fuck yes like that,” Tony exhaled, and squirmed, trying to gain more contact between their bodies. Bruce put a stop to that by rolling until his full weight was stretched out across Tony’s body, pinning him. Tony muttered his approval and reached up to grab a handful of Bruce’s hair and pull him down to kiss him. And fuck… normally he’d have a distinct aversion to being tossed around and manhandled but having Bruce do it was possibly the best thing he could think of. Bruce thrust his hips against him, his breath catching has he felt Tony’s cock hard against his own, but he made no attempt to pull away. Instead, he shoved his hips between Tony’s knees and reached between them, his hand carefully but without hesitation finding both of their cocks and stroking them together. Tony dug his fingers into his shoulder.

“Oh, fuck… that’s…”

“Definitely different,” Bruce said quietly, but his voice was low and rough, and his cock was just as hard as Tony’s.

“Not bad?”

“I’m not complaining.”

Tony slid a hand down to join Bruce’s, working the cautious touch into a firmer grip. Bruce moaned against his collarbone.

“You okay?”

“Fuck… Tony… I know what I said, but it’s… I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want to fuck you right now.”

Tony had to force himself to think about the words that had just made their way into his head, and then about what they meant. He wasn’t going to lie and pretend he’d never been in that position before, but it had been a long, long time, and it wasn’t the way things usually worked. But somehow the idea didn’t bother him nearly as much as he thought it should, because somehow this was different. Because somehow, Bruce _got it_ … Tony wasn’t even sure what “it” was, but he knew Bruce understood it, and that made it different.

Bruce caught the hesitation and frowned. “I don’t… I mean, I just… don’t worry about it…”

“No… I want you to.”

Bruce looked down at him. “You want me to…”

“Want you to fuck me.”

Bruce closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them, his hands gripping Tony’s shoulders.

“You really… you know I don’t know how…”

Tony shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Top drawer. Nightstand. Lube. Condoms.”

“You made everything so romantic,” Bruce said, with his crooked grin, as he leaned over and retrieved the items as ordered.

“Never promised anything even sort of like romance,” Tony said, “and you never asked for it. Give me your hand.”

He studied Bruce’s broad, calloused hand for a moment as he opened the lube and spread it over his fingers. He found himself thinking absently in the back of his head that he liked Bruce’s hands, that they reminded him of his own, and then there was business to be attended to.

Tony wasn’t sure how to coherently give instructions on these things, but Bruce obviously wasn’t completely clueless, either, and if Tony couldn’t give proper instructions, he could definitely manage to let him know when he was doing something right. He could feel Bruce’s eyes on him, doing what Tony would be doing himself under the circumstances: watching his reactions to everything he did, calculating what was working and what wasn’t, charting everything in his head and putting things together as he worked. It didn’t take him much time to figure out that there were things he could do with his fingers that made Tony gasp, and then he had to test out different pressures and angles and techniques until Tony was completely incoherent and writhing under his methodical efforts.

“Are you all right?” Bruce asked, when he realized Tony had stopped producing anything that resembled words, although he was far from quiet.

“Fuck, yes. So all right. So much better than all right. But if you don’t stop doing that I don’t think I can handle it…”

“You want me to stop?”

“I want you to…”

Either Tony had lost all sense of time or Bruce was remarkably quick in locating and managing the condom. And then Bruce was kissing him again, and whatever he’d told Tony about not having much opportunity to practice, he seemed to doing a fantastic job of it at the moment.

This wasn’t where Tony was used to being, in bed or anywhere else. He kept waiting for his brain to start protesting that this wasn’t where he was supposed to be, but the argument in his head never even got started, because every part of his head was completely filled with Bruce and his hands and his skin and the smell of metal and desire and sweat on him, his weight, his body, his hair between Tony’s fingers (and maybe he should stop gripping quite so hard, but Bruce hadn’t complained yet), his breath against Tony’s face as he surrendered the kiss long enough to look down at him.

“You okay?”

“You know, I’m usually pretty much about getting down to business, but I really like kissing you,” Tony said, and then wondered where that had come from. “I mean… that’s not what... well, that _is_ what I meant, but not the…”

“If I keep kissing you, will it keep you from doing more of that?” Bruce asked, amused.

“Definitely.”

He pressed his forehead to Tony’s shoulder. “I want you… it’s killing me. If you don’t want this, just tell me now… please.”

“What? Yes, I want…”

“Well, you’re doing that ‘I’m talking because my brain hasn’t assembled a thought yet’ thing,” Bruce said.

“It doesn’t have to,” Tony said, hands moving from Bruce’s hair down his body. “Leave my brain out of this. It just fucks things up anyway.”

Bruce kissed him again, and this time his hands found Tony’s hips and were lifting them, shifting their weight together, and without any input from his brain at all Tony found himself more than willing to cooperate.

“Just… umm… easy…” he muttered, between kisses, but Bruce didn’t need the warning; he had the kind of patience right now that Tony didn’t have in his calmest moments, and it suddenly occurred to Tony that far from being the potential time bomb people thought Bruce was, ready to go off at the slightest trigger, every part of him, every motion was controlled, steady.

“Told you… I didn’t need the dart gun,” Tony breathed.

Bruce chuckled. “Not yet, anyway. Fuck, you feel… I can’t even…”

“I know,” Tony said, and he did, because even if he hadn’t done this for a long time and Bruce certainly wasn’t small or anything to make it easier, there were still no warning bells in his head, no resistance, no hesitation. Eventually, though, impatience did kick in, and he wrapped his legs around Bruce and tightened them, pulling him the rest of the small distance between them.

“Fuck…” Bruce gasped.

“It’s good…” Tony murmured.

“You sure?”

“Absolutely.”

Bruce shifted and planted one hand on either side of Tony’s chest, the glow of the arc reactor casting strange blue shadows on the ceiling behind his head. And all things considered, Tony was surprised how easy it was just to fall back against the pillow and let Bruce figure it out, knowing the sounds he made were more than enough to tell him when he was getting it right, and it didn’t take long for him to start getting it extremely right. Tony was vaguely aware that Bruce was using him as an experiment, testing to see what happened if he did this, if he did that, and then repeating whatever strategy gave the best results, but he’d never been treated to such a systematic and thorough fucking before, and it was quickly overwhelming him.

“I want to make you come.”

“No objections here…”

Bruce shifted his weight to his knees, freeing his hands to be used for other purposes, and Tony decided he definitely liked Bruce’s hands in particular, along with the rest of him. He had just enough time to regain a semblance of thought after his own orgasm to take note of how controlled Bruce was even in this, his pace unwavering and only a low groan to give voice to his satisfaction.

 

 

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Does it look like you hurt me?”

“It was… okay?”

“If you give me a minute to recover, I’m sure I can come up with a much, much better word than ‘okay’… fuck. ‘Okay’ doesn’t even start to work.”

Bruce lowered his head and smiled slightly. “So that’s a good thing?”

“Whoever you were using your talents on before apparently wasn’t properly equipped to appreciate them.”

Bruce rolled to the side and sprawled on the bed, chuckling.

“I can’t say it’s just because your nuts, because you’re not the first crazy person I’ve slept with.”

“I’ve got my own unique kind of crazy,” Tony said.

“I know. Except that the thing is… to me it doesn’t seem that crazy.”

“Then you’re crazier than I am,” Tony said confidently.

“That’s entirely possible.”

Tony wasn’t used to the kind of silence that followed; it was an easy and companionable silence, instead of one demanding to be filled by his usually uncontrollable need to say _something_. He couldn’t think of anything to say that Bruce probably hadn’t already figured out. Eventually, he propped himself up on his elbows.

“JARVIS?”

“Sir?”

“Everything look normal in Clint’s room?”

Tony could almost hear the AI contemplating his response. “Define ‘normal’, please. The parameters of ‘normal’ with which I was initially programmed didn’t involve anything about…”

“Never mind. Are they okay?”

“Agent Barton appears to be asleep, and Thor does not appear concerned.”

“Thank you. Remind me not to use the word ‘normal’ in this building anymore unless it’s specifically in the context of laboratory results.”

“Note taken, sir.”

Tony looked over at Bruce. “Told you we wouldn’t need the dart gun.”

“If you’d been wrong, you wouldn’t be here for me to brag about it.”

“True.”

“Look, Tony… you can’t just assume that you can trust the Other Guy. And you can’t assume that you can trust me to keep him from showing up.”

Tony crossed his hands behind his head and leaned back, smiling.

“Hate to tell you, but I can assume anything I damn well please, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“The illusion of infallibility that you manage to maintain in place of actual self-confidence is pretty impressive... until somebody sees through it,” Bruce said.

Tony gave him a sharp look. “That’s not…”

“It’s true and you know it, so give it up.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t true. I just don’t appreciate being reminded of it.”

Bruce chuckled. “I didn’t figure you would. But you’re going to be, every time you pull out the ‘Tony Stark, Master of the Universe’ persona around me.”

Tony considered this for a moment. “Can you not do it when there are people around?”

“Depends on who’s around. The rest of the team knows it as well as I do.”

“Well… can you not do it while we’re in bed?”

“Depends on whether you want to play ‘Tony Stark, Master of the Universe’ in bed.”

“Hey, don’t I get a turn to…”

Bruce rolled his eyes. “Stop talking, Tony, or I’ll have to shut you up again.”

“I think I need a break before you try that. I mean, it’s been a pretty busy morning, as far as…”

“Then stop talking.”

Tony grinned and rolled over into the pillow, feeling suddenly sleepy. “Fine. But only because I’m tired.”

“Is there anything you don’t have an excuse for?”

“Ummm… if I think of anything, I’ll tell you.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An unexpected visitor with an agenda sends the team scrambling to protect one of their own... even if their emergency measures probably aren't technically good for him. 
> 
> I got smacked upside the head with this part of the story. I wasn't expecting this particular visitor either. But it seemed like an interesting opportunity, so I went with it. And had a blast writing it. So... hopefully you have even sort of as much fun reading it.

It would have been quite ridiculous, Tony thought, for a day that started off like that to proceed without some sort of disaster. Disaster was, in retrospect, almost required. He supposed he was just lucky he’d gotten a nice hour or two of napping next to Bruce before JARVIS’s voice woke him.

“Mr. Stark, we have an unexpected visitor.”

“Can you just tell them to fuck off?”

“I don’t think that would be a wise thing to say to Agent Fury, sir, and I doubt it would deter him.”

Tony sat up abruptly, wide awake. “Fury is _here_?”

“His car has just arrived.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Tony muttered.

Bruce rolled over and frowned. “What?”

“Fury’s here.”

“Okay, so…”

“Look, if he was here about a mission, JARVIS would already have picked up something about it through the S.H.I.E.L.D. systems. He’s here for Clint.”

“Shit. Are you sure?”

“Fury wouldn’t show up here in person unless he wanted to see one of us in person, and Clint’s the only one he’d be concerned enough to want to check up on in person.”

“Right. Because he was ‘compromised’ and all. What’s he going to do?”

“If Fury figures out how fucked up he is, he’ll have him hauled off to an isolation ward in some S.H.I.E.L.D. psych facility… and they’ll just fucking break him and put back together what’s left. We’ve got to… okay, I’ve got to think. JARVIS!”

“Yes?”

“Get me Natasha and Steve on speaker. It’s an emergency.”

Tony didn’t generally consider much to be an emergency, so both Natasha and Steve sounded distinctly concerned when their voices came online.

“What’s going on?” Natasha asked.

“Fury’s here. Right now. Like, he’s downstairs getting ready to walk into the building.”

“Oh, shit,” she muttered. “You know why he’s here…”

“That’s why it’s an emergency. Steve, get your ass down there as fast as you can and figure out how to distract him, slow him down, _something_ to buy us a few minutes. He trusts you… the rest of us, not so much. Bruce… lab. Now. I need you logged into the security system, and as soon as Fury tries to hack it… which he _will_ , do something to keep him out. Feed him some false information or something, but keep him out. JARVIS _should_ be secure, but Fury’s pretty damn good at what he does.”

Bruce was already out of bed and pulling on his clothes. “I can do that.”

“Natasha… meet me at Clint’s room. We need to get him up and looking decent and we need to make sure he’s reasonably functional, at least for as long as Fury is here… and we need to get Thor the fuck out of there and get him somewhere _else_ before he starts telling Fury all about the happy fun sexy times he’s been having.”

“I’m on my way.”

“How do you expect me to distract Fury?” Steve asked.

“I don’t know. Make some shit up,” Tony snapped.

“Give him an extremely boring and in-depth report on our acculturation sessions,” Natasha broke in. “Every detail. Like, what we had for dinner, how much the cab fare was… he’s the one who ordered it, so he has to at least pretend to care how it’s going.”

“You’re a sharp lady, Natasha,” Tony said. “Okay… everybody _move_. And JARVIS?”

“Yes?”

“You will _not_ allow Fury access to _anything_ , got it?”

“Unless my protocols are overridden…”

“Well, Bruce is going to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Tony said, patting Bruce on the shoulder as he raced past him on his way to the elevator, still pulling his t-shirt over his head.

 

 

 

The brief elevator ride seemed extremely long and Tony spent it hoping feverishly that Clint would wake right up and be reasonably normal and functional. Somehow, he wasn’t betting on it. That would be much, much too easy.

He nodded to Natasha as he stepped off the elevator, and then both of them were knocking loudly on Clint’s door. There was muttering and cursing from within.

“Clint! Fury’s here!” Natasha called. “And I mean _here_ , in the building!”

Some thumping, and then Thor unlocked the door, holding up the pair of jeans he had obviously just pulled on, looking puzzled.

“Why is Fury here?”

Tony was going to explain, but Natasha’s version worked better anyway as far as getting the point across to Thor in a hurry.

“He’s going to take Clint away unless we can convince him he’s okay,” she said quickly.

Thor frowned. “I won’t allow that.”

“You may be the one who ends up with a tranquilizer dart in your neck if you cross Fury,” Tony said. “Besides, he’s got the authority… if he says Clint’s not fit for duty, he can pull him and there’s nothing we can do about it. Is he awake?”

Thor’s frown deepened. “He’s not waking up well.”

“That’s not good,” Tony said, pushing the door open and stepping into the room. “JARVIS! Lights at 100%! Clint! Wake up!”

He realized immediately that this wasn’t going to do it; if they’d had time, Thor might have been able to coax him out of wherever he was, but they didn’t have time, and Clint definitely wasn’t in the same place the rest of them were. His eyes were half-open but dark as steel and hazy, and his body was tight and unmoving, fists clenched.

“JARVIS, where is Fury?”

“About to get into the elevator.”

“What the fuck? Apparently Captain America isn’t very good at being Captain Distraction.”

“Fury doesn’t get distracted,” Natasha said. “You’ve got to slow him down, Tony.”

“JARVIS, come up with a reason for the elevator to start stopping at random floors. I don’t care why. In fact, call some of the people in the offices on the lower floors and tell them to get off their asses and go catch the elevator and take it to the next floor. Every floor. If they ask you why, tell them because I fucking said so.”

“Can I leave out the obscenities, sir?”

“Damnit, JARVIS, just give the order!”

“That’s not going to hold him for long,” Natasha said. “He’ll figure out what’s up and override the elevator controls. It’s not going to buy us nearly enough time to get him conscious and ready to deal with Fury.”

Tony shook his head. “Not even close.”

He looked at Clint, mind racing, and then his eyes fell on Thor standing against the wall, looking somewhere between angry and distressed.

“Thor!”

“Yes?”

“Shock him.”

“What?” Thor asked.

“ _What_?” Natasha demanded.

Tony pointed at Clint. “You heard me. Shock him.”

“You can’t shock him!” Natasha protested. “You could hurt him!”

“Do you have a better Idea? Clint is _ours_. I’m not letting Fury take him out of here. He needs us, not a bunch of random S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives. He’s _ours_. Thor, do it.”

Thor glanced at Natasha, who was staring at Tony with a puzzled look on her face.

“Natasha?” he asked.

She looked over at him. “Do it.”

“Are you…”

“Just don’t hurt him.”

Thor, as uncertain as Tony had ever seen him, walked to the bed and sat down, turning Clint’s blank face until he could hold his head between his hands.

“Clint?”

None of them expected a response, and they didn’t get one. Thor shook his head.

“I don’t like this.”

“None of us like this,” Tony said. “But we’re out of time.”

Thor nodded, and he lowered his head and closed his eyes. There was a faint hum in the room, like a distant swarm of bees, and even in the bright lights Tony could see the sparks starting to flicker between Thor’s fingers. Then there was a sharp buzz, and a very bright light that left Tony and Natasha blinded for a moment. When their vision stopped flashing, Tony saw Clint arched against the bed, shaking, with Thor still holding his head.

“What’s going on?”

“I think he’s coming back,” Thor said, leaning closer to say things that only Clint needed to hear. “He’s coming back…”

“JARVIS!”

“Fury will arrive in approximately one minute, Mr. Stark.”

“Fuck!” Tony muttered.

Natasha turned quickly on her heels. “I can buy you probably two or three minutes, maximum. I’m technically his default handler and Fury will want my report, but he’ll want me to make it fast.”

“That’ll have to be enough,” Tony said.

Natasha darted out the door. When Tony turned back around, Thor had Clint sitting up, rubbing his face, still looking dazed and bewildered and not very functional, but at least fully conscious. He ran to the dresser and started digging for clothes.

“Clint, you’ve got to wake up. Up and get dressed. Come on… please. Fury’s here and if you don’t…”

Thor dragged Clint to his feet, still speaking low in his ear, and there was some awareness starting to dawn in Clint’s eyes.

“Sir, Agent Romanov has signaled for me to alert you that Agent Fury appears to have brought his own portable EEG machine. Since he will not need to access our system, I will not be able to alter the readings.”

“Goddamnit!” Tony exclaimed. “We’re not getting any breaks here! Clint, put these clothes on, _now!_ ”

Thor glanced at Tony. “You know… there is a way to make sure that Agent Fury’s EEG machine doesn’t get any readings.”

“You can’t zap Fury’s machine.”

“Oh, I think I can,” Thor said cheerfully. “You must remember, Tony, that I don’t belong to S.H.I.E.L.D. And obviously, I would have no idea what an EEG machine was or why it would be on Clint’s head if I happened to walk in while…”

Tony grinned. “Okay. Go. I’ll have JARVIS let you know when to make your move. Hurry up, before Fury gets here.”

 

 

 

 

Thor had just disappeared around one corner when Fury came striding around the other with Natasha close behind him, her eyes wide.

“Stark, is there a reason your elevator had to stop at every floor for eight floors?”

“Umm… employee lunch breaks? Nice to see you too.”

He took a deep breath and glanced over at Clint, exhaling with relief when he saw that he was pulling the shirt over his head. He straightened it out as he turned toward the group gathered at his door.

“Sorry, sir. Just woke up.”

“At lunchtime?”

“We had a bit of a late night,” Tony said. “Thursday is movie night.”

“Movie night?” Fury repeated, in disbelief. “What is this, fucking summer camp?”

“It’s a group bonding activity,” Tony said. “Besides, we’re acculturating Steve and Thor, remember?”

“I don’t even want to know what kind of movies you’re showing them,” Fury muttered. “Clint, have a seat in the chair there. I need to run a scan.”

“What kind of scan?”

“The kind to see whether there are any residual effects from the mind control,” Fury said. “Your friends here keep telling us you’re doing fine, but I can’t exactly just take their word for it.”

Clint sat down, flashing Tony a slightly desperate look. Tony gave him his best don’t-panic-we’ve-got-this-I-promise look in return, which didn’t appear to reassure Clint much, but Fury was already setting his briefcase on the table and unwinding a handful of electrodes. As he went about sticking them over Clint’s head, Tony could see Clint’s hands start to clench and his jaw start to tighten.

Tony looked up at the camera and gave a quick nod. The red light beside the camera flashed on and off briefly; message received.

“You’ve had this done before,” Fury said. “It’s just a scan for… Agent Barton, are you all right? You...”

“Little Hawk!” Thor’s voice bellowed cheerfully, as he shoved between Tony and Natasha. “And Agent Fury! I didn’t know you were coming!”

As Tony and Natasha glanced at each other, Thor grasped Fury’s hand and shook it firmly. Fury jerked his hand back, scowling, but Tony grinned; his other hand had been resting on Clint’s head when he’d gotten the shock.

“What the hell was that?” Fury demanded.

Thor looked chagrined. “I’m very sorry, Agent Fury. It seems that on days with heavy cloud cover, I occasionally have… issues. Dr. Banner has been calculating the atmospheric conditions…”

“You shocked me!” he exclaimed.

Thor lowered his head, ashamed as a little boy that had just peed on the floor. “I’m sorry. I never had this problem in Asgard… it’s rather embarrassing.”

“It’s a bit of a pain in the ass, too,” Tony said. “Bruce was trying to get some EEG readings on Clint to send to you guys, and Thor walked in and gave him a high-five and blew all the electrodes.”

“Shit,” Fury muttered, turning to his machine and flipping the switch. The screen came alive, but showed no readings.

“Well, fuck,” Tony said. “Either Clint’s brain-dead, or Thor broke another scanner.”

“I’d vote for the possibility of Clint being brain-dead,” Natasha said, smirking at him, and Clint made a rude gesture toward her.

“At least I’m not a…”

“Children,” Tony said.

“Maybe Tony and Bruce can fix your machine,” Thor said, sounding hopeful.

“Yeah… I’m sure they’d fix it good,” Fury muttered, giving Tony a sharp look. “You playing games here, Stark?”

“Of course I am,” Tony said. “I deliberately trained Thor to electrocute brain-scanning devices. He’s getting really good at it, too. I’m not sure what…”

Fury rolled his eyes and yanked the electrodes off Clint’s head, making him wince.

“Ow! There’s hair attached to those!” he protested.

Fury stepped back and studied him for a long moment. Tony held his breath, but Clint met Fury’s one-eyed gaze with an even look that revealed absolutely nothing; he was Agent Barton and he gave nothing away.

“Fine,” Fury said. “Although I’m starting to wonder if I should stick around for a few hours and see what else is going on here that I don’t know about…”

“Wonderful!” Thor said happily. “Captain Rogers is going to make cookies and then we’re going to play card games!”

Fury glanced at Tony. “Cookies and card games?”

Tony shrugged. “Steve makes good cookies. And JARVIS cheats at cards. Want to join us?”

“Fuck, no, I don’t want to join you,” Fury muttered, slamming his briefcase shut. “I don’t know what the hell you’re doing here, Stark…”

“He’s building a team,” Natasha said quietly.

Fury turned his eye on her. “Is that so?”

“I didn’t say he was brilliant at it… but if you want my assessment, he’s created an atmosphere that’s turning out to be pretty conducive to building a functioning team,” she said. “Steve is coming out of his shell, and Bruce is functioning extremely well and he’s starting to open up to the team, which means there’s a good chance the Hulk will be able to consistently recognize them as friends and not enemies during a fight. And Tony’s an idiot, but you already knew that.”

Tony was holding his breath again. After Clint had been sent to kill her, Natasha had been reborn as Fury’s creation. If she was lying, Fury would know it. After a moment of studying her face, though, he turned back to Tony.

“Well, if cookies and movie night means that next time some fucked-up thing appears out of the sky, the Avengers are ready to deal with it…”

“As long as it doesn’t interrupt karaoke night,” Tony replied, straight-faced.

Fury sighed. “You’re lucky I like you, Stark. Agent Romanov, you’re still Agent Barton’s default handler. If there are any issues with him, I expect them to be reported.”

“Yessir.”

Fury turned and was halfway out the door before he stopped and looked over his shoulder. All of them froze.

“Stark?”

“Yeah?”

“You owe me a portable EEG machine.”

“JARVIS, transfer the funds to purchase a new portable EEG machine into my S.H.I.E.L.D. pay-for-broken-shit account, please.”

“Done, sir.”

Fury sighed and closed the door.

 

 

 

For a long moment, no one moved. Then Thor opened his mouth to say something, but at the same time Tony noticed that the red light beside the camera was flashing, and he made a quick motion with his hand. Thor paused and looked at him curiously.

“Fury’s hacked in,” Tony whispered. “That’s Bruce warning us.”

“I like playing poker with you guys,” Natasha said, keeping her tone entirely normal. “You all suck at it.”

“I think we should go for a board game instead,” Tony said. “How about ‘The Game of Life’? Isn’t that the one with the little cars where you get to decide whether to go to college and then you get married and get to put a little pink peg in the car with your little blue peg, and then you get to…”

“Like everybody here would be putting a pink peg in for their spouse,” Clint muttered, grinning.

“Is there a green peg?” Natasha asked, with a smirk at Tony, who scowled.

“We could borrow the gray ones from ‘Battleship’ and then they could all be zombies,” he suggested. “Besides, you’d have to stop and throw your blue husband peg out in a roadside ditch somewhere after you killed him when he turned out to be a triple agent for the Iranians or something.”

“That mission was last year,” Natasha said. “And he was a triple agent for Chechnya who was selling American military technology.”

The red light stopped blinking. Tony exhaled sharply.

“Are we clear?”

“Clear,” Bruce’s voice came through the speaker. “Sorry he got in, but I got him kicked back out again.”

“You did great. You’re a fucking superstar,” Tony said, his nervous energy suddenly collapsing into intense weariness. “And Thor… fuck. You should take up an acting career. Fucking perfect. I can’t believe that worked. Shit. And I can’t believe he bought what you told him about the team-building…”

“I wasn’t lying,” Natasha said quietly.

Tony stopped and looked at her. “You weren’t?”

“No,” she said, before turning to Clint. “Are you okay?”

“Not really,” he said, glancing down at his hands, which were shaking badly. “I… fuck. That could have been…”

“It wasn’t,” Natasha said. “We weren’t going to let it be. Like Tony said, you belong here with us. We’re not going to let anyone or anything take you away.”

Clint nodded slowly, but Tony could see his eyes starting to drift to the side even as he tried to listen to what Natasha was telling him, and the muscles in his arms were beginning to twitch slightly.

“Clint?” she said, frowning as she knelt and raised a hand to his face. “You there?”

He blinked and turned his gaze back to her, but didn’t seem to understand the question.

“I don’t think electrical shock method of bringing him out of it should probably be used except in extreme emergencies,” Tony said. “It’s probably not good for him.”

Thor laid a hand on Clint’s head, but Clint didn’t seem to notice. “He’s shaking.”

“Well, at least we managed to only induce a partial seizure this time,” Tony said. “And at least it didn’t happen while Fury was here.”

Clint abruptly jerked and sat up in the chair, confused and grasping at the arms of it as if to steady himself.

“What the hell…”

“Easy,” Thor murmured. “Everything is fine.”

“What… Fury was here. Is he gone? What the hell is wrong with my brain now?”

“Clint, stop,” Natasha said sternly. “Fury was here. We couldn’t get you to wake up and Thor had to shock you. We only did it to get you on your feet before Fury made it in here. You’re fine. You did great… you kept it together the entire time he was here.”

“It’s a good thing he wasn’t here very long,” Clint murmured, closing his eyes.

Tony clapped his hands. “You know what? I don’t know about poker night, but movie night doesn’t sound like a bad idea at this point. Bruce? Steve? You up for some movies?”

“I’m hungry,” Bruce said.

“Great,” Tony said, animated and busy again. “I’m going to order a bunch of burgers and crap and every kind of fried thing I can get my hands on, and we’re going to watch some movies that don’t require any thought, because I think today’s required more than enough of that. And I, for one, intend to get really properly drunk.”

“You know what? I think I might actually agree with you,” Natasha said. “Except for the part where I’m not going to get drunk. Although frankly, a couple of glasses of wine are starting to sound pretty good at the moment.”

“Isn’t it a little early to start drinking?” Steve’s voice asked.

“It’s only too early to start drinking if you’re not awake yet,” Tony said.

He glanced over at Clint, who was at least on his feet, although Thor had a steadying hand on his shoulder, and he still looked like he wasn’t sure what planet he was on.

“You okay, Clint?”

“I think so… but yeah. Don’t ever wake me up like that again. Unless you have to.”

“Believe me, it wasn’t for fun,” Tony said.

Clint shook his head. “I didn’t figure it was. _You_ might electrocute my head for shits and giggles, but Thor wouldn’t, and Natasha was here, and she wouldn’t have let you do it if there had been another choice.”

“That’s… wait, you really think I’d shock your brain just for fun?”

“No… I think you’d shock my brain just to collect interesting data and play with it for a while and see if you could discover something.”

Tony frowned. “I’d at least ask your permission first.”

“He probably wouldn’t,” Bruce’s voice said.

“Fuck off,” Tony said, scowling. “Anyway, who gets to pick the movies?”

“Natasha,” Bruce and Steve said, at almost exactly the same time. Tony turned to find that Thor and Clint were also both pointing at Natasha.

“Why does she get to pick the movies?”

“Because otherwise you’ll end up doing it, and all the movies you like are stupid,” Bruce said.

“I second that opinion,” Clint agreed.

“Fuck you all, then,” Tony muttered. “I’m going to go order some food and start drinking. It’s not my fault none of you have any decent taste in movies.”

 

 

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha explains some things about Clint that Thor should probably know, all things considered. Please note the added warnings if such things concern you.

Afternoon had faded into evening, and Natasha’s third and last movie selection, _Fight Club_ , was on the TV. On the table, along with Thor’s feet, were piles of empty food wrappers, a few stray French fries, and several bottles of soda. The end table beside Tony held an empty glass that had been filled and refilled several times and was now empty again, and he appeared to lack either the interest in or the ability to fill it up again, because he was sprawled out on the couch with his legs across Bruce’s lap and his head propped up on a pile of pillows, yawning and occasionally poking at Bruce, who ignored him.

Natasha was sharing a bowl of potato chips with Steve and keeping half her attention on Clint, who had spent most of the evening slumped on the couch, somewhat but not entirely present, answering questions in monosyllables and only occasionally roused enough to engage in conversation. She might have been more concerned and tried to wake him and get him back to reality, but Thor was sitting beside him and, though he seemed to be watching the movies with considerable interest and hadn’t been slacking in the food consumption department either, paused every few minutes to lean in toward Clint and say something quietly in his ear or rub his dark blond hair or touch his face. Every time he did, Clint shifted and looked back at him and responded with at least a murmur or a smile, so apparently he was at least in the same world as the rest of them, and Thor seemed to be keeping him there.

Steve rolled his eyes as Tony, apparently tired of Bruce ignoring him, started poking him in places that were harder to ignore. Bruce scowled at him.

“Stop that.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re drunk.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing. Don’t you know drunk people are easy to take advantage of?” Tony said.

“Yeah. They’re also useless in bed,” Bruce muttered.

Natasha snickered, but Steve turned slightly red, and for a moment she wondered if he was just now catching on to certain things.

“I’m not _that_ drunk,” Tony said, offended.

Bruce shrugged.

“I’ll prove it to you,” Tony challenged.

Bruce laughed and shoved Tony’s legs off his lap, forcing him to sit up. “Good. Then get off your ass and prove it. I’m going to bed, either way.”

He stood up and headed off in the direction of the elevator. Tony brushed himself off, straightened his clothes, and looked over at Natasha.

“Are you laughing at me?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s not a whole lot funnier than Tony Stark, the great seducer, pretty much begging for it.”

“I wasn’t begging. Just offering to prove what I’m capable of. Is Cap’n blushing because he just realized everyone here is getting laid except him?”

Natasha gave him a sharp look. “Everyone except him and me, you mean.”

“Yeah, but you…”

“Tony, I’ve actually been managing to like you for the last few days. Whatever you’re about to say, just… don’t. Okay?”

Tony considered this for a moment, then smiled. “You like me?”

“I’m warming up to you. Yes, really. So please don’t make some stupid drunken asshole comment now, all right?”

Tony nodded, opened his mouth, and then closed it, grinned, and turned to follow Bruce. Steve slumped down into the couch and tried not to turn even redder. Natasha patted his arm.

“You all right?”

“I…” he said, then cleared his throat. “I suppose I didn’t realize that there was quite so much of _that_ going on around here.”

“All in good fun, Captain,” Thor said, and Clint, who seemed to have been somewhat wakened by the scientists’ exit and Steve’s consternation, grinned at him.

“Nothing wrong that, right?”

His hand, which had been resting on Thor’s leg for a while, started to inch upward. Thor chuckled.

“Awake now, are you, little Hawk?”

Steve fixed his eyes determinedly on the TV screen. Natasha stood up, rubbing his shoulder reassuringly.

“Thor, come with me.”

Thor looked puzzled. “Just me?”

“Yes, just you. Clint will be fine. Steve will keep an eye on him.”

Thor gently disengaged himself from various parts of Clint and obediently followed Natasha through the kitchen and into the hall behind it.

“JARVIS, this conversation is off the record,” she said, closing the door behind her.

Thor immediately straightened up, serious. “I’m listening.”

“Okay, look. I know Clint better than anyone. Coulson probably understood him almost as well as I do, but not quite. And I gave Coulson the Clint Instruction Manual, although it was a slightly different version since Coulson was his boss and wasn’t fucking him… although I think that’s only because Coulson was his boss… and the version I’m going to give you isn’t even all that different, because Clint is Clint.”

Thor nodded warily.

“First of all, Clint is brilliant. I mean, tactically, strategically… he’s one of the sharpest guys S.H.I.E.L.D. has. He gets put on some of the most critical and important missions… but he doesn’t lead missions. He can’t, because Coulson and I are pretty much the only people who ever got him well enough to work with him. He’s reckless and he puts himself in harm’s way and half the time you’d swear he was _trying_ to get hurt or killed… and the only reason he doesn’t is because he’s so fucking good at what he does. He’s been shot… oh, four times, since I’ve known him? And nothing but luck that none of them were serious. He’s put himself in places nobody expected him to come out of alive, and the fact that he did partly means that he’s really tough, but it also means he got really lucky, or that Coulson or someone else had his back behind the scenes.”

“And why…”

She leaned back against the wall and crossed her arms. “I don’t like talking about him like this, but… Clint has two ways of dealing with things that he doesn’t want to think about. And he had enough of those things _before_ Loki got into his head. He doesn’t think about them. He either fucks or fights until they go away. And it doesn’t really matter which, because for him they’re sort of the same thing. It’s distraction. Enough physical stimulation to keep his brain shut up. He likes fighting and he likes fucking, and he’ll do either one with just about anybody… I’m sorry, and I’m not saying he doesn’t care about you, but that’s not part of the requirement for him. And if it’s just the usual Clint things that he’s trying to avoid, a good fight or a night out getting laid will shut it up for him. But if it’s not… if something’s really under his skin and he really can’t handle it… that’s when it gets dangerous, because that’s when you realize it’s not really the sex or the fighting that he’s really looking for… he wants to get hurt.”

Thor frowned. “I understand that some people enjoy both pleasure and pain during…”

Natasha sighed. “Okay. Yes, there are lots of people who like a little pain with their sex. And some people who like more than a little, and some people who like some stuff most of us would consider pretty fucked-up. But usually, that’s two… or however many… people who have agreed to some boundaries and they’re not going to let anyone get seriously injured.”

“That’s…”

“Well, Clint doesn’t _have_ any boundaries. He wants to be hurt. And I don’t mean just have pain inflicted on him because he likes it. I mean, he wants to be _hurt._ And if that means going out and fighting and taking some injuries, he’s fine with that. But he’s not in any shape for combat at the moment even if there was something to send him out to kill. So the only other way he has to keep all of this Loki stuff from forcing him to deal with it is sex, and that’s not going to be enough. It’s not enough… look at the mess he is right now trying to keep all that shoved into the back of his head and not deal with it, and it’s not working.”

Thor shuffled his feet. “If you wish me to stop…”

“No… I’m not saying that. I don’t know. That might be the only thing that’s keeping him together at the moment. It’s going to reach a point where he _can’t_ get away from Loki and everything anymore, and when that happens it’s going to be really, really bad, and I don’t know if putting some time and distance between what happened and when it finally hits him is making it better or making it worse…”

Thor shook his head. “I don’t know either. But you think that when whatever he’s doing now to make it go away isn’t working anymore…”

“He’s going to have to up the ante. Shit, you don’t know what that means, do you? He’s going to need more. And first he’s going to ask you to hurt him… you know, just a little at first, just for fun… but then he’s going to want you to _hurt_ him, and he’s not going to tell you where that line is, and he’s going to do everything he can to get you, or anyone else, to cause him enough pain and hurt him bad enough to make it go away.”

“I won’t do that to him,” Thor said, protective.

“I know you’d never hurt him. Not deliberately, but he’s really good at getting what he wants.”

“What does he want?”

“He wants to go down. Down to where he doesn’t have to think about anything. And he wants to be put down there hard, fighting every step of the way, and he wants it to hurt enough that he forgets everything else. And I’ve seen him go there with people before and all of them have walked away because it started to get really scary and really dangerous and he wasn’t even close to satisfied.”

“So you’re telling me to be very careful with him,” Thor said. “And I will. But I don’t know what to do to help him with the things he doesn’t want to think about…”

“Neither do I,” she admitted. “I guess you can distract him for as long as you can do it safely… and that’s up to you… Clint is really tough, and he can take a lot without breaking. What I’m really worried about is that nobody here is going to hurt him enough to make those things go away…”

“And when nothing is enough to chase them away anymore…”

“I think he’s going to fall apart in a really, really bad way,” Natasha said. “I don’t want him alone, Thor. And I don’t want him in his room. Take him to yours.”

“Why?”

“Yours doesn’t have a balcony. Or a loft. Or a bunch of sharp things.”

“You think he may… harm himself.”

“If it gets that bad, he won’t just hurt himself,” she said grimly. “Clint doesn’t do anything halfway. I just don’t want him alone. I’m not… there’s a crisis protocol in place for situations where an agent might be at risk of suicide, but I don’t think we’re there yet, and if I activate that protocol and Clint finds out, he’s likely to leave here and then we won’t be able to do anything. I’ll do it if I think it’s necessary. And Thor…”

“Yes?”

“If _you_ think it’s necessary, you have to tell me.”

He nodded. “I understand.”

She looked at him curiously. “The whole getting into someone else’s head thing… is that Loki’s trick, or can you do it too?”

“Loki can trick and force his way into others’ minds. I would have to be not only allowed, but invited… that person would have to consciously allow me to do so.”

“And Clint’s not likely to trust anyone inside his head for a while, is he?”

“He may trust me enough… in time.”

“If he would let you in, could you help him? I mean… when he has to go back and face all those memories, could you be there with him?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”

Natasha sighed. “All right. That’s the Clint Instruction Manual. I don’t know how to get him through this… but maybe if we can keep him together for a little while, he’ll be able to handle it all a little better when it does catch up with him.”

Thor laid a hand on her shoulder. “I promise you, I will be very careful with him.”

“Well, don’t be too careful with him, or he’ll know I said something,” she said, trying to smile.

“I will watch him very carefully. And if I can’t, I’ll make sure that someone else is, or is at least nearby so JARVIS can call them.”

She nodded. “That’s probably the best plan right now, as far as I can tell.”

Thor nodded thoughtfully. “Agent… I mean, Natasha… when you said ‘up the ante’…”

“It’s a poker thing…”

“I know. Tony and Clint taught me to play poker. And… if it helps Clint, I’m quite certain that I can think of ways to… ‘up the ante’ without doing him any serious harm. My companions in Asgard have generally been those who preferred… rough handling.”

Natasha shrugged. “I don’t have any good answers. We’re all flying blind here. Just do whatever seems like it’s working, and we’ll get him through this.”

JARVIS’s voice, sounding contrite, broke in. “I apologize for the interruption, Agent Romanov, but Captain Rogers wants to know if you are coming back soon.”

“Why? Is something wrong?”

“He appears… uneasy. I think Agent Barton has been telling him about things he doesn’t appear comfortable discussing.”

Natasha tried to muffle a laugh. “Oh, fuck. That’s another thing about Clint… there’s pretty much nothing he won’t talk about. I mean, when it comes to work, you couldn’t make him talk if you tortured him, but when it comes to his personal life… like I said. He doesn’t have any boundaries. Poor Steve. Let’s go rescue him.”

Thor chuckled. “You are very conscientious in attending to Captain Roger’s concerns.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m just trying to be nice to him. He’s struggling. This isn’t the world he’s used to, and everyone he knows is gone, and he’s lonely.”

“You could help with that last part,” Thor suggested.

“Yeah, right. Me and Captain Purity.”

Thor raised an eyebrow. “You never know. It’s not the same world he’s used to.”

“He needs to find himself a nice young lady who had a debutante ball when she turned sixteen and is waiting for a knight on a white horse.”

“Does he know how to ride a horse?”

“Hell, I don’t know. Come on… we’d better go rescue him before Clint makes his head explode.”


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint isn't the kind of person to tell you what he needs. But Thor knows, and he's just the right person for the job... even if Clint has to fight him every inch of the way. Mind the BDSM warnings. All consensual, though. 
> 
> Okay, this part took a while to get written because I had it in my head but it turned out to be a little intense to write compared to my usual stuff. Hope it works for you.

 

 

 

 

When Thor and Natasha returned to the living room, Steve’s face was bright red and he appeared to be trying to disappear into the couch. Clint had stopped mid-sentence and looked over his shoulder, grinning.

“What are you doing?” Natasha asked, shaking her head.

“Just telling Cap some stories,” Clint said.

“So I hear,” she said, crossing her arms.

Thor chuckled and grabbed Clint by the arm, tugging him to his feet. “I think you’ve caused enough trouble.”

Clint smirked at him. “I haven’t even started causing trouble.”

Natasha rolled her eyes and waved. “You two can go away.”

“We will, thank you,” Thor said, escorting Clint toward the elevator.

Natasha sat down on the couch and put her feet up on the coffee table, waiting for some of the bright red flush to fade from Steve’s face before she even tried to talk to him.

“You all right?”

“I’m fine. I just… umm… Clint was just telling me those things to mess with me, right? I mean, people don’t really…”

She sighed. “Honey, it’s Clint. With him, it’s a fair bet that whatever he told you was probably true… but that doesn’t mean everyone else does.”

Steve laughed uneasily. “Okay. As long as… with everything going on around here, I was starting to think that maybe… well… that maybe nobody actually just does things… you know, those kinds of things… the normal way…”

“What, you mean a man and a woman and no leather or plastic or weapons or random items of furniture besides a bed or food products or costumes or money being exchanged?”

Steve blinked. “Yeah. That.”

“Yes, people still do things that way.”

“Oh.”

“But it can get a bit dull, you know.”

“I wouldn’t know,” he muttered, looking at the floor. “Can’t get bored of something you’ve never gotten to try.”

She patted his hand. “I know. We’ll find you a nice girl one of these days.”

“A nice girl that’s completely normal but just fine with me being an unfrozen biologically modified superhero who should be her great-grandfather’s age?”

“I didn’t promise she’d be normal.”

 

 

 

 

As the elevator door slid closed, Thor reached over and pushed the button for the floor where his own room was.

“I like my room,” Clint said, leaning toward the buttons.

He was surprised to find a large hand in the middle of his chest, pressing him firmly back against the far wall of the elevator. He looked up at Thor and cocked his head.

“You’re not making those decisions at the moment.”

Clint’s eyes narrowed. “What? Wait… what did Natasha tell you?”

“You’re not asking questions at the moment, either,” Thor said lightly, his hand still pressing Clint back against the wall and feeling Clint’s chest start to rise and fall a little faster.

“Oh?” he asked. “What am I allowed to do at the moment?”

Thor looked at him evenly. “You are allowed to say, ‘stop’. And I will. Anything else you say, I may or may not ignore, depending on your position at the time, but that I will listen to.”

“I didn’t agree to this,” Clint said, his voice slightly unsteady.

“Then tell me to stop,” Thor said.

Clint licked his lips and shifted his feet, but said nothing. The elevator stopped, and the door hissed open. Thor removed his hand from Clint’s chest and motioned toward the hallway. Clint remained leaning where he’d been pressed, watching Thor with a strange, questioning gaze.

“Very well,” Thor said agreeably, reaching back into the elevator and grabbing Clint firmly by the shirt at the back of his neck and propelling him forward. Clint went easily, without resistance, but the tension in his shoulders and the slow, deliberate steps made it clear he knew this wasn’t any sort of joke or game and that his mind was racing, trying to decide how to respond. He didn’t make a sound until they walked into Thor’s room and Thor turned him and sat him down on the bed.

“Clothes off.”

Clint looked up at him, eyes dark and unreadable. “Fuck you.”

Thor smiled. Of course Clint would test him; regardless of how much he might want it he wasn’t going to just let himself be ordered around by just anybody. He was going to make you earn the right. Thor had no objection to that. He shrugged and briskly manhandled Clint out of his shirt, which Clint didn’t do much to resist, then shoved him backwards onto the bed and planted a hand in the middle of his bare chest to keep him down while he used his other hand to strip off everything else he was wearing. Clint watched him warily and tested whether he could get out from under Thor’s restraining hand, but realized quickly that it wasn’t going to be easy. He waited until Thor seemed distracted, turning to toss Clint’s clothes onto a chair, before he lashed out, striking at the arm that pinned him down and kicking sharply in an attempt to land a heel into something soft.

Thor grinned; the blow to his arm had no effect and he had felt the kick coming; he caught Clint’s ankle in his free hand and shook his head.

“There’s no need to do that. I told you… tell me to stop and I will.”

“Fuck off.”

Natasha had told him Clint wanted to go down fighting. That was just fine. Faster than Clint would have thought such a big man could move, Thor had flipped him face down on the bed, and Clint’s wrists were crossed above his head and his own belt was looped around them and then secured to one of the metal bars of the headboard. Clint jerked at the belt hard, twisted his wrists till the leather dug into the skin.

“Goddamn it…”

Thor settled in comfortably beside him, keeping part of his attention on Clint’s legs and wondering if he should secure them too, just to avoid any more kicks, but decided it would be more entertaining to let him try it.

“You don’t like this?” he asked.

“Fuck you. Let me go.”

“I think if you wanted me to let you go, you would ask me to stop, because you know I would. If it entertains you to be difficult, I have no objection. But I’m willing to wager that certain parts of you are very, very enthusiastic about the situation…”

Clint growled; he wasn’t going to admit that his cock was already hard enough to hurt where it was pinned between his body and the bed, and that it had been that way since he’d felt the belt around his wrists.

“Why are you doing this?” he demanded.

“Because you need it.”

“I’ll fucking tell you what I need. I don’t…”

“No, you won’t. You would never admit to needing this, would you? There is no shame in it, but you’re not a man of words, little Hawk. You’re a man of action.”

Clint shifted against the bed and bit his lip. The sensation shifting through his body, the slow change moving across his brain… they were familiar, but he didn’t trust them. Too many times he’d been left hanging here… too many people who thought this was enough, or were afraid to take it much further.

Thor watched the muscles of Clint’s back shift, seeing his arms ease into their restrained position as his body relaxed slightly. He looked over at the dresser and his own belt, which he rarely bothered to wear; he liked leather straps, but he hadn’t practiced with this one, didn’t know exactly how stiff it was or how hard it would bite into the skin. Maybe another day. Or maybe a better selection of leather straps. Hands would do for today. There was something intensely personal and intimate about the use of hands, anyway.

The first blow surprised Clint more than it hurt him, and he jerked and made a sharp sound that was muffled in the pillows. Thor watched him for a moment, then laid another, more stinging slap across one exposed buttock. This time Clint cursed, but didn’t move, so he launched into a thorough and methodical series of blows, each one ringing out with the slap of skin against skin. Clint twisted his hands against the belt and tightened his fists around it, but refused to give any more response than that.

“You’re not even going to complain a bit?” Thor asked, sitting back to study the reddened skin, the individual hand prints disappearing beneath the overall flush.

“Fuck off. Fuck you. Damnit…”

Thor smiled slightly. “Very good. On your knees.”

“No fucking way.”

“Are you telling me to stop?”

“I said, ‘no fucking way’. Did you not hear me?”

“Just making sure,” Thor said, and he grabbed the other man by the hips and lifted and shoved them. Clint, taken by surprise, kicked and twisted sideways, but as strong and agile as he was, Thor was stronger, and unlike Clint, Thor was still thinking clearly. Clint’s eyes, when he turned to glare at Thor over his shoulder, were dark and distant and hazy. Thor ignored his struggling and manhandled him until he was on his knees, his ass in the air. Clint shifted, trying to raise himself on his elbows, but Thor grabbed him around the waist and pulled him backwards, pulling his arms straight and leaving him with the long muscles of his back and shoulders stretched and tight, unable to do more than raise his head off the mattress.

That was the moment when all the fight went out of Clint, and he went very still, pressing his forehead against the bed, breathing hard. When Thor administered a series of ringing slaps across the backs of his exposed thighs, he shuddered and leaned back into the blows instead of away from them, pulling the line of his upper body even tighter. With each strike across already red and stinging skin, he bit harder on his lip and twisted his wrists more tightly against the leather of the belt, letting these minor pains distract him for a moment as he tried to keep silent.

“I would like to hear you, little Hawk.”

“You won’t,” he snapped, realizing he could taste a hint of blood from his bitten lip.

“Oh, I think I will. I’ve been gentle so far.”

Clint felt his body tense at this, preparing, but the next slap echoed through the room and cracked over his skin with such force that no amount of preparation could have kept him silent, and he heard himself cry out even as he arched back, demanding more. The next blow was just as hard, and the ones that followed, rocking his body, shoving his face into the mattress, leaving such a burning, seared, scalding pain across his skin that he couldn’t even distinguish one strike from another; they were beginning to blur into a constant sensation of pain that leaked from the nerves of his skin and began to flow through his body. When it finally hit his brain it obliterated the awareness of everything else, narrowing his focus so sharply that there was nothing in the world but the pain and the hand that kept administering it, that the rest of his body had ceased to exist and he had no awareness of his hands, the words and wordless sounds escaping him, nothing beyond this. Something in the back of his head screamed that if Thor stopped right now, he didn’t know if he could stand it. The blackness, the complete free-fall, was too close now, and being this close and being yanked away would break him.

And then Thor did stop, but only for a moment, although for Clint it felt like a year, and then he was back, but this time his hands over the bruised and scalded skin were slick and cool, and this new sensation sent a shock wave through his body, tightening his focus even more.

“You know it will hurt when I fuck you,” Thor’s voice said, low and close to his ear.

Clint nodded, the only response he could manage.

“Do you wish this to stop?”

“Fuck… no… you can’t do that… not now…”

A satisfied rumble, and then a few more stinging slaps to make him arch his back and strain against his restraints again, and then the sudden intense pressure and burn of being penetrated. He couldn’t hear the pained sound he made, but he felt Thor’s hand running up the long muscles of his back, knew he was waiting just a moment until Clint’s body gave up just enough resistance to allow him to thrust in further.

“Fuck… that hurts…”

“Tell me to stop.”

“Oh, fuck, no… more…”

He got more, and it was abrupt and stunning enough to send white spots dancing across the blackness behind his eyes. Then Thor drew back and thrust into him again, and again, punctuating each motion with another sharp blow across his hips and buttocks. He couldn’t draw enough air into his lungs to make a sound, and didn’t care; the world was gone and he was almost gone, almost beyond thinking, so close to that edge and reaching for it desperately, letting the pain become everything, become his entire existence, his only awareness, trying to stop hearing his own voice in the back of his head that still knew where he was and why. He didn’t want to know anything. He wanted his own voice to go away.

There was no sense of time, but there was a sense of a building desperate ache in his lower body that throbbed in counterpoint to Thor’s thrusts, and the peak hit him before he realized it was coming, and he was shouting as he streaked the sheets underneath him, as his cock pulsed and his body poured itself into the release.

He tried desperately to hold that, to ride it down, but it wasn’t enough; he was still hanging on the edge, every nerve over-sensitized and screaming, every muscle trembling. For a long, horrible moment he felt awareness starting to slip back into his head, sneaking around the edges of his mind, and he tried to fight it off.

Then Thor’s hands were on his back, and what had started as an electrical tingling was rapidly intensifying into sharp jolts that darted across his skin, and then, as Thor tightened his big hands around Clint’s waist and fucked him harder, there was a sudden burst of pure electricity that seared across every inch of his body and set every desperately hypersensitive nerve on fire, a fuse that lasted only a fraction of a second before the sheer force of it overwhelmed his physical senses along with his capacity for thinking, and the implosion tore loose the last grip that conscious thought had on his mind. His last awareness was a moment of absolute relief, and then there were no thoughts at all, only a spiraling blackness and pilled him down and silenced everything.

For a moment Thor was concerned; he honestly hadn’t meant to shock him that hard. But when he untied the belt and rolled Clint over, rubbing his raw and numbed hands, he was limp and unresponsive, but showed no signs of being in distress. He shook him lightly, but Clint was a rag doll in his hands.

He rose and stepped into the bathroom; when he returned a minute later, there was a hint of tension in the arch of Clint’s back and in his face, but it vanished as soon as Thor settled back down next to him. Thor rolled him just enough to lay a towel over the cold wet spot on the bed, then pulled Clint against his chest, finding that he almost seemed to melt against him, slumping into the crook of his shoulder, the angle of his hip. He reached for the damp cloth he’d brought from the bathroom and took a moment to clean away the small smear of blood under his bitten lip and the streaks across his cheeks, then any other messes, before tossing the cloth aside and settling back down to make one last inspection for any damage he might have accidentally inflicted. The bright red across his ass was starting to bloom into the deeper colors of bruises, and so were the indentations of fingers along his back and his sides, but that was to be expected, and he saw nothing else that concerned him. He pressed his fingers against Clint’s throat and found his pulse strong and steady, and his breathing was slow but even. He felt slightly cold, although not the disturbing and sudden chill that had overtaken him before, so Thor reached down and located the blanket at the foot of the bed and pulled it over them.

 

 

 

He waited for a while to see if Clint would start to show any sign of coming back to reality. When it didn’t seem as though that was going to happen any time immediately, he tried to keep his voice low, knowing JARVIS was programmed to pick his own name out of any background noise, no matter how quietly it was spoken.

“Can I help you, sir?”

“Is Agent Romanov occupied at the moment?”

There was silence before JARVIS responded. “She would like to know the nature of your request before she answers that question.”

“I want her to tell me if Clint is safe where he is.”

The voice that answered was Natasha’s. “I’ll be right there.”

Thor casually took note of her disheveled hair and slightly flushed appearance as she strode into the room, but decided to ignore it, suspecting that mentioning it would cause considerable annoyance. She looked around the room, apparently noting that nothing was broken and that aside from some clothes, there did not appear to be anything lying around.

“What happened? Is he all right?”

“He seems to be, but that’s what I’m asking you.”

Natasha sat down on the edge of the bed and laid a hand on Clint’s face, turning it toward her.

“Boy, he’s really gone.”

“Is that bad?”

“No. It’s just… I wasn’t sure anybody could put him down that hard without hurting him. It’s not that I’ve never seen him like this, but the only other times I have, he was in bad shape… I mean severely injured.”

“From a fight?”

“Or something else,” she said, rubbing a thumb across Clint’s forehead and finding a nearly hidden scar at the edge of the hairline. “He never explained how this one happened… along with some others. But you didn’t hurt him.”

Thor chuckled. “I don’t think he’ll be able to sit down without pain for several days.”

Natasha raised an eyebrow and lifted the blanket, whistling at the bruises.

“That’s impressive.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t…”

“No… it’s an impressive level of control. That’s a fine line. You’re not new at this.”

He grinned. “No, I am most certainly not. We have much time in Asgard, and that leads to seeking various new and interesting forms of entertainment.”

“I think he’s fine… he’s really, really deep, but I think he’s in pretty good shape.”

“How long will he stay like this? I had expected…”

“He’s practiced this. A lot. He’ll stay down there as long as he can… snipers learn to have an incredible degree of control over their physical responses to pain and stress, and he uses that training in ways it probably wasn’t intended. The adrenaline drop is extremely exhausting, though, and at some point during the night he’ll probably slide into something more like normal sleep, and he should start to wake up fairly normally in the morning. If he doesn’t start coming back up, or if you need help, have JARVIS call me.”

“I will.”

She glanced at the floor. “It… might take me a minute to answer. But I will, if I know it’s you.”

“You will be occupied?” he asked politely.

She tried not to smile. “Maybe.”

“Acculturation?”

She broke down and grinned. “It seems to be proceeding at an accelerated pace.”

“Ahh. That’s excellent for Captain Rogers. And for you?”

She raised her eyebrows. “You will not repeat this, right?”

“Have I repeated anything you’ve ever told me?”

“That super-serum? The one that made him into Captain America?”

“Yes.”

“Holy shit. He has no idea. I mean, _no_ idea… what it did for him in… that department.”

“Well, he hasn’t had a chance to test it out properly, has he?”

She looked away to hide her smirk. “Don’t worry. I’ll take good care of him.”

“I have no doubt that you will take the best possible care of him,” Thor said, grinning. “Perhaps it’s a good thing he finally decided to test it on you instead of a… less experienced partner?”

“Oh, lord,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I don’t even want to know what would have happened if he’d cut this loose on some sweet little virgin on their wedding night. Clint may not be the only one who can’t walk properly in the morning…”

She stopped suddenly and glared at him.

“You will _not_ repeat that.”

“You trusted me with Clint’s secrets… is it fair to assume I can be trusted with yours as well?”

“I wouldn’t have said anything if I didn’t trust you,” she said, patting his head. “About me or about Clint. Just stay with him and keep an eye on him, and if you need to leave him for any reason, get somebody else to stay with him till you get back, at least until he’s back on this planet.”

“I’ll be right here as long as I need to be.”

She smiled and stood up. “I know you will. I think that’s the quietest I’ve ever seen him. Usually even when he sleeps he’s kicking and fighting things in his head.”

She closed the door quietly behind her.

“Would you like me to dim the lights?” JARVIS asked.

“Please. And raise the room temperature slightly. Thank you.”

“Of course. Will there be anything else?”

“No. I think that will be quite satisfactory.”

He settled down comfortably, tucked Clint a bit closer, and closed his eyes. He wouldn’t sleep; he would be wide awake if he was needed, but it was pleasant to close his eyes and drift a bit.

 

 

 

 


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everybody's morning-after. Steve makes breakfast, Clint complains, and Tony is distracting.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your sleep,” JARVIS said, “but I’ve been instructed to inform you that Captain Rogers is cooking breakfast and has invited you to join him in the living area.”

Thor yawned. “Thank you. Tell him that we are appreciative but not quite prepared for breakfast yet.”

“I will tell him that, sir.”

Thor stretched and looked down at Clint’s face against his shoulder. He had stirred when JARVIS spoke, so Thor shook him gently.

“What?” Clint muttered, eyes still closed.

“It’s morning.”

“What do you want?”

Thor frowned. “Are you awake, little Hawk?”

“What do you want?” he repeated, his words slurred and irritated.

“Just to say good morning,” Thor said, and kissed him.

He was a bit surprised to receive a clumsy but abrupt fist to the side of the head for his troubles, and drew back.

“Why did you hit me?”

Clint turned his face toward the pillow. “Told you not to fucking kiss me. Just fuck me and get it over with. If you try to kiss me again I’ll fucking kill you and I don’t care what my orders are…”

Thor suddenly realized that it wasn’t him Clint thought he was talking to. He felt a sudden chill, imagining the scene that Clint was replaying in his head, and then shook it off and grabbed him firmly by the shoulders, rolling him over to face the ceiling.

“JARVIS. Brighter lights. Clint, wake up. You’re home. Loki isn’t here. You’re dreaming. Wake up, little…”

He froze, realizing that if he knew his brother at all, Loki had probably used the same pet name for his prized possession. He was fairly certain, though, that Loki would never have casually addressed his toy by his given name, so he went back to that.

“Clint, wake up.”

He shook him briskly. Clint swung at him, but then his eyes flew open and his hands stopped in midair as he stared up at Thor in confusion.

“What…”

“You were dreaming. Loki isn’t here. He’s far from here, in a place he won’t see the outside of for at least a few centuries. You’re safe.”

Clint shuddered and let his hands fall back beside his head. “Fuck.”

“It’s all right. There’s no one else here but me, and if you can mistake me for my brother with your eyes open, I’ll have to be very concerned about your vision.”

Clint managed a trace of a smile. “Yeah. Wait… did I hit you?”

Thor shrugged. “Not hard enough to matter. You, on the other hand…”

Clint shifted his weight and frowned, and Thor watched as he stretched and moved gingerly, testing the damage from the night before and wincing as he discovered particularly painful areas.

“What the hell did you do to me?” he complained. “I can hardly move!”

“Just a few bruises,” Thor said cheerfully. “A long hot shower will help.”

Clint rolled toward the edge of the bed and winced again. “Ow. I don’t know if I can stand up for a long hot shower.”

He wasn’t going to admit to Thor that it wasn’t just the soreness, but the shaky and unbalanced feeling of having been down for so long and just starting to re-establish some degree of communication with the body he’d abandoned. He had a feeling he didn’t have to admit it, and that Thor probably already knew that too, but it was easier to complain about the bruises.

“Isn’t there a hot tub somewhere down by the training rooms?” he asked. “JARVIS? There’s a hot tub in here somewhere, right?”

“There are several of them, Agent Barton, but some of them are for private use by Mr. Stark. There is one, however, down the hall from the weight-training room, and as far as I have been instructed there are no limits on your access to it. Would you like me to turn on the heater and the water jets to prepare it for you?”

“Hell, yes,” Clint said.

“You should eat something,” Thor suggested.

“Later. Hot tub now.”

“Do you need assistance getting some clothes on?”

“No. Ow… fuck. Umm… yes.”

 

 

 

Natasha came knocking on the door just as Clint was making a pained attempt to get his arms high enough above his head to shove them through the sleeves of a shirt. She stepped in and leaned against the wall, watching with no attempt to hide her amusement as Clint rubbed his sore shoulders and sat gingerly back down on the bed. Thor strolled out of the bathroom and greeted her with a broad grin.

“Good morning! I’m sorry we didn’t take Captain Rogers up on his invitation to breakfast.”

“He’s still cooking. I just stopped down to check on you two,” she said.

Clint frowned and studied her. “What?”

“What do you mean?”

“What did you do?” he demanded, breaking into a grin. “What’s that look on your face for? You look like…”

“Hush,” she said, rolling her eyes.

He raised his eyebrows. “You got laid.”

“Stop,” she said sharply.

“You did!” he said triumphantly. “It’s all over your face! Some secret agent you are! What did you do, go out and… wait a minute. Why are you blushing? I don’t think I’ve _ever_ seen you blush.”

“Stop it!” she protested, fighting a smile.

Clint looked over at Thor. “I guess we know what put the Captain in such a generous mood thing morning, huh?”

She crossed her arms. “You want to talk about which one of us has been engaging in more questionable activities with more people in this building?”

“Sure,” Clint said cheerfully. “Because you’re embarrassed about it, and I’m not.”

“If you say anything to Steve, I’ll break your neck, Clint.”

“I don’t think she’s joking,” Thor said.

“I’m serious. Promise me you’re not going to go run your mouth,” she said sternly.

“Fine. I promise.”

She uncrossed her arms. “Good. Where are you two going?”

“Hot tub,” Clint said. “Maybe after that I’ll be able to move without feeling like I’ve been tied in fucking knots.”

“Have fun,” she said, turning toward the door. “And by the way… don’t do anything disgusting and messy in the hot tub, please. I actually use it after workouts and I don’t really want to have to wonder what’s in the water.”

“You’re no fun,” Clint said.

She glanced over her shoulder and smirked. “Somebody thinks I’m a hell of a lot of fun.”

Clint laughed. “I have to ask. I mean, he’s Captain America and all, but still… how’d he do for his first time?”

“Clint Barton, you have no shame!” she exclaimed.

“Not one ounce of it. So, answer the question.”

“I’m not answering that.”

Clint glanced at Thor knowingly. “Everybody’s first time is a little…”

“He did just fine for his first time,” Natasha interrupted. “And his second time. And his third time, and his fourth time, and his…”

“Fuck!” Clint said. “What exactly kind of serum did they use on him?”

Natasha smiled smugly. “Don’t worry, honey. Thor doesn’t seem too disappointed so far.”

Thor slapped Clint on the back, making him flinch. “I don’t think you’re going to win this game with her, little Hawk.”

“Maybe we should get Thor some of that serum,” Natasha suggested.

“No,” Clint said, quickly enough to make both of the other two laugh.

“I’m going back to have breakfast,” Natasha said. “And I was serious about not saying anything to Steve.”

“I get it,” Clint said.

“I was serious about not doing anything disgusting in the hot tub, too.”

“Define ‘disgusting’.”

“Just don’t,” she said, closing the door.

Thor chuckled and took Clint’s arm, easing him to his feet. “Shall we? I don’t know that you’re in any state to do anything in the hot tub that she would disapprove of anyway.”

“Not yet,” Clint said, flinching as each motion pulled at strained and battered muscles. “I get back on my feet fast, though.”

“We’ll see.”

 

 

Bruce walked into the living room with Tony following behind him, complaining about the necessity of being awake at this hour and about how many pleasant activities could be occurring in bed right now if he hadn’t been dragged out of it. Bruce paid absolutely no attention to him, but walked up into the kitchen to look over Steve’s shoulder.

“That looks like good bacon. And Thor’s not here, so some of the rest of us might actually get to eat some of it.”

“I have a big bowl of pancake batter in the fridge in case he shows up,” Steve said, avoiding looking at either of the two men. “How are you this morning?”

“Not bad,” Bruce said.

Tony muttered something about how he would have been willing to make the morning considerably better than ‘not bad’, and this time Bruce gave him a sharp look.

“Would you just sit down somewhere and close your mouth until it’s time to put food in it?”

Tony grinned. “Food’s not…”

“No.”

Tony rolled his eyes and wandered off toward the sofa, where he sprawled out and grabbed a pillow, apparently intending to catch up on the sleep he’d been deprived of. Steve glanced carefully at Bruce.

“Tony’s not driving you nuts, is he?”

Bruce smiled. “Nah. I can handle him. And if not, I can go Hulk and throw him through a wall.”

“Good to have a back-up plan,” Steve said.

“He’s just pissy because I made him get up. I don’t pass up offers for home-cooked breakfast if I can help it.”

“You could have just left him to sleep.”

Bruce looked over at Tony and chuckled. “That wouldn’t have been any fun. This way I get breakfast and entertainment. Besides, I do want him up and functioning. We have work to do today… I want to try to do some computer breakdowns on the EEG readings from Clint and do some research in some neuro-psych journals… not that any of them will have any studies on Asgardian mind-fucks, but there is some good research on the neurological effects of…”

“I thought you said you weren’t going to make me think till I’d had coffee!” Tony protested from the sofa.

“Then make some coffee and get yourself going,” Bruce said. “I actually need your brain today, even if it does come attached to your mouth. Fury’s going to be back, or else he’s going to come up with something else, and we’ve got to at least try to figure out a way to get Clint’s head back in line before that. I want to see if any of the new research on neurological reprogramming and stimulation of brain wave states has anything we can use.”

“You know I do better with robot brains than human ones, right?”

“No,” Bruce said. “You just like robot brains better because the robots don’t complain if you fuck them up while you’re playing with them.”

“That’s a very legitimate reason to prefer robot brains,” Tony said. “Especially since we’re talking about a human brain that lives in my friend’s head and I don’t want to break it… or him.”

“Well, that’s why I told you to get some coffee and a good breakfast. “We’re not going to break him. Natasha’s more worried about him breaking himself. So we’re going to try not to let that happen, right?”

Tony pulled the pillow over his head. “You’re a lot easier to deal with when you’re naked.”

Steve turned as red as the bacon he was cooking, and Bruce rolled his eyes.

“What’s the matter? The genius part of the billionaire playboy philanthropist doesn’t feel like doing any work today?”

“Fuck off,” Tony muttered. “Or at the very least, make some fucking coffee so I can deal with things properly.”

 

 

 

Thor watched and chuckled as Clint lowered himself carefully into the hot tub.

“I like this,” he said, nodding at the bubbling jets. “It’s better than a hot spring.”

“Yeah, especially since you can control the temperature and turn the jets on when you want them,” Clint said, settling into the water. “And you don’t usually find natural hot springs inside nice spa rooms with skylights and doors that lock.”

“You could fit quite a few people in here,” Thor observed.

“Whatever you’re thinking, don’t tell Natasha about it. Not unless you’re going to invite her. And she wouldn’t play anyway.”

Thor grinned and opened his arms. “Come over here and I’ll see if I can do something for those sore muscles.”

Clint leaned back against the water jets and studied him for a moment, but didn’t move. Thor’s smile faded.

“Is something wrong?”

Clint’s sharp eyes watched him for another long moment, unwavering and unreadable.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked.

“Doing what?” Thor asked, puzzled. “Because you asked if there was a hot tub…”

Clint cut him off with a wave of his hand. “Any of this.”

Thor cocked his head. “Because I like you.”

“No,” Clint said slowly. “There are people I like… admittedly, not very many of them, but… no. Is it just about sex? Is it just because you feel bad for me because of what your psycho brother did? Are you just entertaining yourself? Are you just trying to make me feel better?”

Thor frowned and thought for a moment, realizing that the answers to questions like this apparently weren’t as easy for Clint as they were for him. Perhaps, he thought, an entire lifetime of never being able to trust anyone had that effect on a man. After all, he knew about what Loki had done to Clint, but how many others before Loki had been more than happy to take advantage of that reckless spirit and the need for someone to understand?

“Perhaps… if I knew more about the rules and expectations of such things in this place, I would be able to…  I don’t know if you would understand if I talked about the brotherhood of those who fight together, stand together, who would guard the other’s back, treat the other’s wounds, and offer whatever comfort or ease of pain that could be had between them?”

“Yeah,” Clint said quietly. “I would understand something about that.”

“I would fight beside you if you were in battle, and the things you fight now… even if they are your own enemies and I have no power against them, I would still offer you whatever help and comfort I can give, as long as you would accept it.”

Clint nodded slowly. Then, after a moment, he slid across the hot tub and into Thor’s reach. “Is the offer to do something for these sore muscles still open?”

“It is,” Thor said, pulling him in and planting a kiss on the back of his neck as his big hands found the tight knots under the bruised skin and began to rub in long, steady strokes. Clint only hesitated for a breath before he leaned back and let himself be soothed.

“I’m not going to make this easy,” he said. “I don’t think I know how.”

“I would expect nothing more and nothing less, little Hawk. I fully expect you to fight me at every opportunity.”

“Good. At least you’ve got that part.”

 

 

 

Bruce shook his head and looked up at Tony’s smug grin.

“These cots aren’t very comfortable. And I’m sure they weren’t made for two people.”

“No. But that’s because there’s never been anybody else that I would fuck in my lab before. I’ll have to get a bigger cot.”

“Or maybe we should actually be _working_ in the lab,” Bruce said, although he hadn’t made much of an attempt to stop Tony’s busy hands from unbuttoning his shirt. “We do have things to do.”

“I’ll be better at doing things if I can think about something other than my hands on your ass.”

Bruce felt his cheeks redden. “You sure do play hard to get, don’t you? Besides, if I let you have what you want now, you’ll just want to take a nap while I do all the actual data analysis.”

“I was planning on taking a nap while you did the data analysis anyway. It’s boring.”

Bruce scowled. “I’m not your little undergraduate lab assistant.”

“No… I’ve fucked little undergraduate lab assistants before, and none of them…”

“Seriously?”

“What, about the lab assistants?”

“No. About how you can possibly be such a pain in the ass.”

“Many, many years of practice. It’s an acquired skill. In fact, if you could get a Master’s degree in it, I would probably…”

“Tony, if you don’t shut the fuck up and start doing something interesting, I’m getting up and getting back to work.”

Tony grinned. “That sounds like a challenge.”

“You think everything sounds like a challenge.”

“True. Why do you still have so many clothes on?”

 

 

 

 


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha has a mysterious errand to run with Bruce and Thor, leaving Tony in charge of Clint. Tony's curiosity gets the better of him and he puts together some things about Clint... and Clint and Loki.

Thor held up Clint’s hand out of the water of the hot tub and studied it with amusement.

“What happened to your fingers?”

“Your fingers don’t get all wrinkled when you’ve been in the water?”

“No. Apparently this is a human peculiarity. It looks quite funny. It does go away, I hope.”

Clint chuckled. “Yeah. When your hands dry out. I guess that probably means we’ve been in here long enough, though.”

Thor sighed and pulled Clint back against his chest. “A shame. I like you right where you are. Although…”

He paused, and Clint tipped his head back. “What?”

“Being in the water doesn’t cause… other human parts to shrink and wrinkle up, does it?”

Clint snorted. “You _would_ wonder about that, wouldn’t you. No… not unless it’s really cold water.”

“I shall have to keep that in mind. Although perhaps I should check for myself, just to make sure…”

His hand drifted from Clint’s chest downward, but Clint grabbed his wrist, and Thor felt his body stiffen with sudden wariness.

“What did I do?” he asked.

“Nothing,” Clint said flatly. “But I’m not just going to be your little submissive pet, you know. I’m not going to be anybody’s pet. Or anybody’s toy.”

Thor sighed. “Do you really think that’s all I want you for? Do you even think I would enjoy such a thing? That I would want someone like that?”

Clint relaxed slightly. “I just…”

Thor rested his forehead against the back of Clint’s head and spoke quietly. “My brother made a great mistake in using you as a toy, little Hawk. He had no idea his toy would turn on him and help bring him to justice.”

“I’d rather have just killed him,” Clint murmured.

“Asgardian justice is not gentle,” Thor said. “He will have much time to regret what he did.”

“Not to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“He might regret the whole trying to take over the world, because that’s what they’re punishing him for. He doesn’t care what he did to me and neither does your Asgardian justice.”

Thor shook his head. “I don’t know his thoughts, my friend. But there is one thing he does know, because it was the last thing I told him before I came back here.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That the day the others chose to release him for his crimes against the rest of mankind, I would still be waiting to dispense my own justice for his crimes against my friends.”

Clint smiled slightly. “Maybe that’ll give him a little something extra to think about.”

“Oh, I suspect it will. But at the moment, I’m thinking that you should get out of this water before you get any more wrinkled, and we should go find something to eat. Unfortunately, I suspect we’ve missed breakfast, so we’ll have to fend for ourselves.”

“But if I get out of the hot tub, all my muscles are going to start aching again,” Clint protested.

“Do you plan to stay in here all day?”

“Depends. What are you offering as an alternative?”

Thor raised his eyebrows. “You shouldn’t tempt me.”

“Give me one good reason not to.”

“I refuse to allow it until you’ve at least eaten some proper food.”

Clint sighed. “Yeah, but if we go up to the living room, there’s likely to be people there, and we’ll have to talk to them. JARVIS? Is everybody in the living room?”

“No, sir. There is no one in the living room.”

“Where is everybody?”

“Mr. Stark and Dr. Banner are in the lab. Agent Romanov is in her private quarters, and Captain Rogers is using the exercise equipment in the gym.”

“Good. Maybe we can get some food and get out of there without having to deal with anybody,” Clint said. “Not that I’d really mind the chance to make fun of Natasha some more, but she might kick my ass, and after last night I don’t think I could even defend myself.”

“And yet you’re ready to go back to bed and do it again?”

Clint shrugged. “Bed, floor, wall…”

“Stop that,” Thor said.

“Why?”

“Because if you don’t, we’ll never get anything to eat.”

 

 

Natasha found Clint and Thor sitting on the couch with their feet on the coffee table, eating something out of bowls. She was somewhat relieved, since this was considerably easier to deal with than what she’d found Bruce and Tony doing when she went looking for them.

“What is that?” she asked.

“Beanie-weenies,” Clint said.

Natasha cocked her head.

“Baked beans. With hot dogs in them.”

“I know what it is,” she said. “I was just wondering why two grown men were voluntarily eating it for lunch.”

“I like it,” Thor said.

“Thor, have you ever had food you didn’t like?”

“I think so… I just don’t remember when.”

Clint motioned to the kitchen. “There’s some more if you want some.”

“No thanks. Actually, I was looking for Thor.”

“Me? Why?”

“Because we’re going shopping,” she said.

“Me and you?”

“Me and you and Bruce. Finish your lunch and then go put some decent clothes on.”

“Where are we going?”

“Don’t worry about that,” she said.

Thor shrugged, tipped up the bowl and emptied the rest of the beans into his mouth, and then wandered off toward the elevator. When it arrived, Bruce and Tony stepped out, Bruce looking slightly sheepish. Natasha looked at them both and shook her head.

“You know, you could ask JARVIS to lock the doors to the lab if you want some privacy,” she said.

“Got side-tracked,” Bruce muttered, pointing at Tony. “His fault.”

“I believe that,” Clint said.

Tony shrugged.

“Where are we going?” Bruce asked.

“You’ll see.”

“Thor’s going with you, apparently,” Clint said.

Tony gave her a curious look. “I’d really like to know where you’re going that you’re taking Bruce and Thor but you won’t take me or Clint or Steve.”

“I’m not taking Clint because he’s supposed to be resting. I’m not taking Steve because I’m pretty sure he’s not quite up for this particular shopping trip… not yet, anyway. And I’m not taking you because you’ll just be a dick.”

Tony shrugged. “That’s not unlikely. Have fun. I’m assuming you want one of my credit cards.”

Natasha held up a card. “JARVIS was so kind as to find one for me. Thanks.”

“No problem. Hey… I smell beanie-weenies!”

Clint pointed to the kitchen. “Help yourself. When Thor gets back he’ll inhale whatever’s left. Do you think demigods get gas?”

Tony snickered, and Natasha rolled her eyes. Thor returned a few minutes later, wearing a clean shirt and jeans and a broad grin.

“What are you so happy about?” Tony asked, standing by the kitchen counter eating the last of the beans out of the pot with a wooden spoon.

“I like adventures,” Thor said. “And I have no doubt Agent Romanov has something interesting planned.”

“I’m sure she does,” Clint said, eyeing her suspiciously.

Thor’s smile faded, and he leaned over to whisper something in Natasha’s ear. She nodded and patted his shoulder.

“I know. Tony’s going to be so kind as to keep an eye on Clint while we’re gone.”

“I didn’t agree to that,” Tony protested.

“Wait a minute,” Clint argued. “First of all, I need a babysitter? And second of all, you’re hiring Tony for the job?”

“Well, it’s Tony or Steve. And really, if something bizarre and disturbing is going to happen… besides, which one would you rather have hanging around keeping an eye on you?”

Clint sighed. “I don’t like it when even your fucked-up ideas make more sense than the alternative.”

“You remember what happened last time you left me to keep an eye on him,” Tony said warily, raising an eyebrow.

“I do,” Clint said, with a smirk.

Tony glanced uneasily at Thor, but he just chuckled. “If you’re going to play with him, be gentle. He’s had a bit of rough handling.”

Clint scowled. “I’m sitting right here, you know.”

Bruce shook his head. “I’m not sure I want to know what Thor considers ‘rough handling’, but I’ll bet Tony does.”

“Why do you say that?” Tony demanded.

“Because you’re nosy.”

Tony looked thoughtful. “So what would you say if I decided to find out?”

“I’d be more surprised if you didn’t.”

“Still sitting right here,” Clint said.

Natasha sighed, took Thor by the arm, and motioned to Bruce. “Shall we, gentlemen?”

 

 

 

Tony waited until they were off in the elevator before turning to Clint.

“Should we be worried?”

Clint shrugged. “I wouldn’t bother.”

“You don’t think there’s anything to worry about?”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure there probably is,” Clint said. “But when Natasha has a plan, you can either go along with it, or try to fight it and end up being sorry you did.”

“I wouldn’t argue with her unless I already had my suit on,” Tony said. “I have no doubt she’d kick my ass.”

Clint shrugged. “She and I are a pretty even match. It depends on the circumstances and who can get their hands on something they can use as a weapon first.”

Tony set the pot of beans down and leaned on the counter, studying him. “So… now I’m curious. What exactly did Thor mean by ‘rough handling’?”

Clint leaned back and grinned. “Why do you want to know?”

“Like Bruce said. I’m nosy.”

“I think I’d have to show you.”

Tony’s mind wrapped itself around that thought. “Umm… not out here where Captain Vanilla is going to walk in and flip out.”

Clint shrugged. “My room’s fine.”

He stood up, and Tony couldn’t help but notice how gingerly he moved, and the wince as he straightened his legs, and that only made him more curious. He turned and walked off toward the elevator without a word, and Tony followed him.

They stepped into Clint’s room and Tony closed the door behind them. When he turned around, Clint was already dropping his shirt on the floor, his back to Tony so he could see the lines of bruises down his sides and the reddened streaks of skin from his shoulders down where the electric shock had travelled across his skin. In another moment the rest of his clothes were gone, and Tony found himself staring blankly at the spectacular canvas of blue and purple and red displayed across the skin from his waist down nearly to his knees.

Clint stood for a minute, feeling Tony’s eyes on him, before turning around.

“Well, that’s… fuck,” Tony managed.

“That’s ‘rough handling’,” Clint said.

“And you… I mean… what the hell? Didn’t you…”

“What? Tell him to stop? No.”

“Why the fuck not? Goddamnit, Clint, I’ve lost fights and never looked like that! What…”

He fell silent, because those gray eyes were watching him with a burning intensity that somehow seemed to fry his brain and send a rush of heat to his groin.

“You were curious,” Clint said, his voice low. “Now, are you more freaked out or turned on?”

“Umm… both. I’m still trying to decide which one is winning. Didn’t that fucking _hurt_?”

“It was supposed to. The problem is finding someone who’s willing to hurt me _enough_.”

“It’s not going to be me,” Tony said.

Clint shook his head. “It’s not going to be anybody. Anyone who was willing to hurt me as bad as I want to be hurt would probably be someone was trying to kill me.”

“Or just torture… wait a minute. Fuck, Clint, is that why you take all those fucking insane missions that no one else will take?”

“Maybe,” Clint said, his eyes unreadable.

“Does S.H.I.E.L.D. know this?”

“Natasha knows it. Coulson knew it. He tried to keep me off those missions, but I’m too good at what I do.”

Tony didn’t know how he had ended up standing so close to him, because part of his brain was still telling him to turn around and walk out the door.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” he asked.

“No. Just trying to see how close I can get,” Clint said evenly, looking back at him.

“You realize that’s seriously fucked up.”

“So I’ve been told.”

Entirely too many different thoughts were chasing each other around in Tony’s head at once, and the one that came out of his mouth wasn’t the one he expected.

“Loki.”

Clint’s eyes narrowed. “What about him?”

“He didn’t hurt you, did he. I mean… he messed with your head, he made you do things… but he didn’t hurt you.”

Clint shook his head. “That’s the thing. He can get into people’s heads and control them… but he can’t see who they really are. He just shoves you out. If he’d realized…”

A shiver ran across his skin, and he dropped his eyes and turned his face away. Tony felt his stomach clench as the understanding dawned on him.

“Loki’s crazy enough and manipulative enough…”

Clint nodded slowly. “If he’d realized what he could have done… he would have _been_ that person. The one who would be more than happy to see how close to the edge he could take me… how much he could hurt me without breaking me. And he wouldn’t have been too terribly worried about breaking me, either. And if he’d realized he could have had _that_ kind of power…”

He stepped away abruptly, stalking the confines of the room.

“If he’d realized he could have had that kind of power…” he repeated, his hands clenched, “I don’t think Natasha could have gotten me back. I don’t think anyone could have gotten me back.”

Tony felt a shiver across his own skin. “But he didn’t. And Natasha did get you back. And…”

Clint glared at him. “You don’t understand.”

“What?”

“It’s _knowing_ what could have happened, and… fuck.”

“And some part of you wishing it had?” Tony asked.

Clint stopped pacing and lowered his head, and for a long moment Tony wasn’t sure if he was going to put a fist through the wall or come after him or just shut down completely. Finally, though, he looked back up at Tony, his eyes dark and haunted.

“That’s the scariest part,” he said, his voice barely audible. “I’m not nearly as scared of the part of me that fucking hates Loki as I am of the part that…”

There was something very close to the edge of shattering in the raw, uneven tone of his voice, and Tony really didn’t have any idea what would make things better or worse but something told him he’d better fucking do _something_ , even if it meant him getting punched in the face, so he reached out and grabbed Clint by the arms and pulled him in and wrapped his arms around him and crushed him as tightly as he could.

For a fraction of a second it felt like he was holding a tornado. Then, suddenly, all the fight and force was gone, and Clint slumped against him, his forehead against Tony’s shoulder, breathing like he’d just run a hard sprint.

The minutes seemed to slip by and Tony was just starting to wonder if he should do something else when Clint’s arms came up and wrapped themselves around Tony’s waist, and he was pressing him back toward the wall as his head came up and pinned him in a hard, desperate, demanding kiss. Tony’s back hit the wall and there was nowhere to run, but even though running was definitely still in his mind, it certainly wasn’t at the top of the list, because Clint was naked, and he was pressed against Tony from lips to knees, and the way he was kissing him was rapidly sending most of his awareness to his lips and then straight down to his cock.

“Fuck,” Tony gasped, when he could get his mouth back.

Clint’s eyes were fixed on his. “Want you to fuck me.”

“Look, are you sure that’s a good idea? I mean, you’re not…”

Another mind-numbing kiss didn’t help, but Tony pulled back, trying frantically to be somewhat responsible and not do any damage.

“Clint. You’re not…”

“I said, I want you to fuck me.”

“Your head’s really not in the right place for…”

“I don’t want to think. I just want…”

“I’m _not_ going to hurt you,” Tony said, feeling himself surrender.

Clint studied his face for a moment, then nodded.

“I know. I didn’t think you would. I just… please, Tony.”

Oh, hell. That was pretty much the last push; he’d tried being responsible but this was more than he could take.

“You do know Bruce is going to want to watch the video of this when he gets back, right?” he murmured.

“I figured,” Clint said, biting at his neck and pulling him toward the bed. “Let’s give him a good show, huh?”

 

 

 


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha and some associates help Bruce and Thor find some useful new items. Tony finds out exactly how distracting Clint can be, where Natasha took the others for their shopping trip, and why Thor should be kept away from certain foods for everyone's benefit (except his own).

 

 

 

Thor stood with his arms crossed and his head cocked, studying the floor-to-ceiling display of dildos and vibrators in every imaginable size, color, design, and function.

“Humans are creative,” he said.

“That’s one word for it,” Natasha said.

Bruce shuffled his feet and seemed to be trying to find somewhere to look that wasn’t a display of videos, costumes, X-rated board games, blow-up dolls, paddles, whips, bondage gear, sex toys, magazines, books, posters, or more sex toys. “Let’s just stick with ‘creative’.”

“Don’t act like you’ve never been in an adult store before, Banner,” Natasha said.

“I didn’t say that. I’ve never been in one with a woman… or another man. Or both. Or…”

Natasha looked up as two women approached them, one wire-thin with shiny black hair straight to her waist, the other voluptuously curved, with florescent pink hair in pigtail braids.

“Gentlemen, this is Kelly, and this is Summer. They’re the owners of this fine establishment, and they’re old friends of mine… especially when I need something very specific for a very specific sort of mission.”

“And you do come up with some interesting requests, girl,” Summer said. “Who are your boys?”

The other woman gave her a look. “You don’t recognize them? Shit.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Wait, you’re not…”

“They’re just two friends of mine, and I brought them here so you two could help them find some things,” Natasha said firmly.

Both women straightened up and nodded. Bruce looked slightly less embarrassed; if Natasha trusted them to know who she was and what kinds of things she was probably doing with the things she bought there, they both obviously had an understanding of discretion.

“Relax,” she said, patting his shoulder. “I come here because this store has some of the most high-end clientele in the city… and from other places… and nobody talks about who comes in or out of here. That’s why they don’t even have a street entrance.”

“So, what are we helping your boys with today?” Kelly asked.

“I thought you could help my friend here… the embarrassed one. Nothing especially kinky or bizarre… he’s got a partner with a big mouth who insists he’s seen everything and done everything, and I’m pretty sure he hasn’t, so maybe you can help him find some things to rattle Mr. Know-It-All a little bit and maybe shut him up for a minute or two.”

Kelly smiled. “We can do that. Come with me… I’ve got some ideas for you. Nothing scary, I promise. Just a few little surprises for him…”

She led Bruce away, and Natasha turned to the other woman, and her smile faded.

“Okay. Help me out with my other friend here. He’s definitely not new to the whole BDSM game by any means. But he’s got a really psychologically damaged partner with a serious self-harm complex, and he really sort of _needs_ to sub, but he’s one of those with major trust issues, among other things, and he wants to go down, but he wants to go down fighting as hard as he can, and he… let’s just say he’s more than willing to do some really dangerous things to get there. I was hoping you could help my friend here find some things he could use to help get him to that edge with the pain thing in some kind of reasonably safe way.”

Summer nodded slowly. “Has Clint gotten that bad?”

“Worse than you want to know,” Natasha said. “But you’re the professional and I know you do pain play with your subs if that’s what they want… help him figure out some ways to give him what he needs without actually harming him.”

“How much pain are we talking about?”

“As much as it’s possible to safely inflict. In fact, borderline on the safety. And you can’t count on safe words or him letting you know if you’re going too far because he doesn’t have a ‘too far’ and he’d let you do him serious harm without ever telling you.”

Summer frowned. “That’s an iffy situation.”

“It requires considerable focus and control,” Thor said. “I consider it a serious responsibility to my friend to avoid damaging him.”

“Jeez, if I could get you to give some lessons to half of the idiot wanna-be doms who come in here thinking it’s all about paddles and shouting orders…” Summer said, sighing. “Anyway, I can help you. You look like you’re pretty physically strong… or _really_ physically strong… so we’ll take that into consideration. How do you feel about leather?”

Thor smiled. “I’m very fond of leather.”

“Awesome. And I’m thinking… we’ve got this line of glass toys that are great for some really interesting temperature play… you can put them in really hot or really cold water, or even in the freezer… and do some really interesting things with them. And, of course, we’ve got a fantastic selection of whips and things like that… oh, come on. I’ll just show you.”

Natasha watched them depart for the section that mostly displayed black leather and plastic items with buckles and zippers and such. Then, assured that the two were both in good hands, she wandered off toward some of the other displays, thinking to herself that it would be a shame to come in here and not buy _something_ for herself, and perhaps something to introduce Steve to at least the existence of a broader world of options and ideas. Either he’d give it a shot or it would make his head explode… she figured that either way, she’d have something to keep her occupied.

From somewhere else in the store, she heard Thor’s loud, cheerful voice asking, “Out of curiosity, what does LGBT spell?”

She couldn’t hear Summer’s answer, but she could hear Thor laugh.

“How foolish of me. I thought it was all just sex.”

Summer’s head popped around one of the racks, and she grinned at Natasha.

“Seriously… when Clint’s done with him can I keep him? I think I’m in love.”

“Just don’t let him use any of your kitchen appliances. Or any of your other electronics, for that matter.”

She frowned. “Are we crossing electronics off our list of possible activities while we’re looking?”

“If it runs on batteries, it’s probably OK. If it plugs into a wall, keep him the hell away from it.”

“Well, we’re mostly battery-powered here, so I can work with that,” she said, turning back to Thor. “Come on, honey… I’ve got some great stuff for you back here.”

 

 

 

Clint had managed to drag Tony back toward the bed, but when they fell onto it, he couldn’t help but flinch at the pain of his bruised back and ass hitting even the soft surface.

“Look, I think you’re…” Tony attempted.

“You think too much,” Clint complained. “I can just…”

He started to roll over, but Tony shook his head and grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him back; he wasn’t doing this if he couldn’t at least see Clint’s face to have some idea what was going on in his head.

“Not like that.”

“Well, fuck,” Clint muttered impatiently. “I thought you were supposed to be the one who did stupid reckless things.”

“To myself, sure. To my friends, not so much, I guess,” Tony said, sitting back on his heels. That gave him an idea, though, and he reached down and hauled Clint to his knees, turning him around.

“What are you up to?”

“This,” Tony said, pulling Clint back into his lap, his back against Tony’s chest with the arc reactor between his shoulder blades and Tony’s arm across his chest.

Clint made a small noise and shifted back against Tony’s cock. “That’ll work.”

Tony released him long enough to dive for the nightstand and retrieve the required supplies and make use of them before pulling Clint back against him again. Clint squirmed impatiently.

“Come on.”

“You know, I’m…”

“If this is something else about me being…”

“No… I was going to say that I’m not sure exactly what kind of equipment a demigod is packing, but from what I’ve seen even when he’s got clothes on, I’m pretty sure I don’t quite measure up…”

Clint laughed. “Honestly, at the moment, I’m really fucking glad you don’t. I’m not sure I could handle that again without a little more recovery time.”

“Well, that works, then,” Tony said, or was in the process of saying when Clint got tired of his talking and lifted himself on his knees and lowered himself abruptly onto Tony’s cock.

For a moment Tony couldn’t think about anything except the suddenness of it and the heat and the grip of Clint’s body. By the time he realized that Clint’s body was tense and tight and that his breathing was shallow, he had already started to relax slightly, exhaling slowly.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Just a little sore. It’s… I’m fine.”

He shifted his weight and leaned his head back against Tony’s shoulder and closed his eyes, and Tony felt the sharp tension in his muscles ease.

“Better?”

“Yeah.”

He shifted again, somewhat cautiously and then with more force, rocking himself back on Tony’s cock. Tony tried to keep still and let Clint do the moving, but the lower half of his body did not appear to be taking directions from his brain and he couldn’t help but thrust back up to meet Clint with each slide back down. With one arm across his chest to keep him steady, Tony realized that he had another hand, which at the moment was gripping Clint’s hip but could be put to other, more interesting tasks, and he reached around and grasped Clint’s cock where it was thrust out into empty air. Clint gasped some words that might have been insults or curses, but it was impossible to tell, and he jerked up hard into Tony’s hand, then back down just as hard onto his cock.

“Fuck,” Tony gasped. “That’s…”

Clint wrapped his own hand around Tony’s, squeezing far more tightly that Tony would have dared to, and rocked his hips up into the tight grip as he picked up a faster pace. Tony caught and matched it, meeting him halfway with a sharp thrust just as Clint was sliding back, hard enough that he could hear the moan in the breath it knocked out of him with each collision of their bodies.

After Natasha had interrupted his activities earlier and had dragged Bruce off, leaving him frustrated and tense, he realized he wasn’t going to be able to keep this up very much longer.

“Clint…” he murmured, slightly desperate.

“Harder.”

“I can’t…”

“Damnit…”

His hand squeezed so hard that Tony’s fingers almost hurt, and he didn’t even want to think about anyone ever grabbing his cock that hard, but he wasn’t going to complain, because apparently it was enough. Clint’s rhythm started to falter and his head snapped back against Tony’s shoulder, and with the tight grip Tony could feel each pulse of Clint’s cock as he came over their joined hands. That was more than Tony needed, and he pulled Clint down hard onto his cock and buried his face in his shoulder to muffle whatever sounds escaped him as he let himself go.

He let Clint slump forward on the bed as he sprawled sideways, and for a few minutes both of them were quiet as they caught their breath.

“You okay?” Tony asked.

Clint stretched his limbs carefully. “Yeah. I’m fine. I could sleep for a few…”

“Oh, no,” Tony said, sitting up.

“Why not?” Clint protested.

“Because I’m not having you drift off into Flashback Land to visit with Frosty the Psycho, because it scares the shit out of me when you do that. Come down to the lab… I’ve got some arrows S.H.I.E.L.D. asked me to work on a while back… I didn’t know they were specifically for you at the time, but I’m sure they were… and I sort of gave up because I couldn’t figure out how many gadgets I could put in an arrow without affecting its trajectory.”

“Everything on an arrow has to be balanced,” Clint said, and Tony was relieved to see alertness and his usual enthusiasm for his specialty brighten his eyes. “And it can’t deflect any of the air that’s traveling over the fletches… those are what stabilize the arrow from pitch and yaw. So it would have to either be part of the arrowhead, or be something that’s symmetrical and fits close against the shaft…”

“So come down to the lab and take a look,” Tony said. “It would help shut Fury up if I could show him something you and I were designing… you know, back to business and all that.”

Clint sat up. “Yeah. We can do that.”

 

 

 

They were in the elevator when Clint leaned over and kissed him with an odd combination of intensity and carelessness. Tony found himself having to steer his mind back to thinking about arrows and tracking devices and other things he wanted to attach to them, just to keep it from veering off into thinking about dragging Clint off into some dark corner of the lab and fucking him over one of the tables.

“You’re really, really distracting, you know.”

“In my line of work, being able to distract people can keep you alive.”

“Yeah, but I’m not thinking that’s how you usually distract them.”

Clint grinned. “No. I think that kind of distraction would probably get me in more trouble than I was already in, depending on the situation. It’s definitely not a S.H.I.E.L.D.-approved method of distraction.”

“I’ll bet it works for Natasha.”

Clint shrugged. “She doesn’t like to use it. No actual physical stuff. She’ll suggest and imply and promise everything on earth, but…”

“Everybody’s got to draw the line somewhere,” Tony said.

“Yeah, well…”

He was cut off by a beeping from his pocket.

“Huh,” he muttered, pulling out his phone. “Speak of the devil…”

“What?”

“Text from Nat.”

“What’s she say?”

Clint snorted, grinning broadly, and handed the phone to Tony. “Take a look.”

Tony looked at the screen.

DAMNIT CLINT DO NOT EVER FEED THOR THAT SHIT AGAIN.

Clint took his phone back and replied.

PROBLEM?

YES PROBLEM WE’RE STUCK IN TRAFFIC AND HE’S FARTING IN THE CAR AND HE THINKS IT’S THE FUNNIEST FUCKING THING EVER.

Clint handed the phone to Tony again.

“I don’t even think there’s a good enough response to that,” Tony said.

“Oh, I think there is,” Clint said, taking his phone back again. “But if I say it, I’m going to get hurt when she gets back here.”

“It sounds like you might get hurt when she gets back here anyway, since she’s blaming you for the problem.”

“It’s not my fault if beanie-weenies aren’t a normal part of the Asgardian diet,” Clint said. “Wonder where they went, anyway?”

“I’ll bet I can find out,” Tony said. “JARVIS, whatever card you gave Natasha, did the charge show up on it yet?”

“There is a fairly significant sum charged to an establishment called ‘S&K Enterprises’.”

“That doesn’t help. Look it up. What is it?”

“According to their website, it is ‘an LGBT-friendly adult emporium and education center’.”

“Oh, shit,” Clint said, eyes widening. “She took Thor there?”

“She took _Bruce_ there?” Tony said.

“And they bought a lot of stuff,” Clint said.

“You don’t think Bruce… what the hell. Why did she take him?”

“Maybe she thought he needed an education.”

Tony scowled. “He’s not supposed to know more about it than me!”

“Why not? Because no one’s supposed to know more about _anything_ than you?” Clint said, amused.

“No… because… well, just because,” Tony said, crossing his arms.

Clint laughed. “You might end up enjoying it.”

“Thor might end up breaking you.”

Clint shrugged. “Works for me.”

 

 

 


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team starts to realize exactly how deeply Loki managed to damage Clint, and that Clint may be in more danger than they realized, but not necessarily in the ways they expected.

“I can’t get the transmitter and the recording device to be small enough not to throw off the balance of the arrow and still be well-protected enough to withstand impact…” Tony muttered, poking at the electronics on the work table in front of him.

“Explain again exactly why you think I need an arrow with a recording device and a transmitter?” Clint asked.

Tony glanced over at him, distracted from his thoughts by the change in Clint’s tone. He had seemed interested in, or at least amused by, Tony’s projects, but he was starting to sound tired and distant.

“You okay?” he asked.

Clint, sitting on his stool and leaning on one elbow against the table, nodded wearily. “Yeah.”

“Are you sure? You don’t look so good.”

“Thanks.”

Tony put down his screwdriver. “I’m serious. You look pale. JARVIS, is the rest of the team back yet?”

“They returned a few minutes ago.”

“Okay, well, can you… shit!”

He jerked forward just in time to grab Clint by the shoulders as he started tipping backwards off the stool.

“Clint! Hey!”

For a moment Clint blinked at him, dazed and blank, and then his eyes rolled back and he slumped off the stood and crumpled to the floor, with Tony just managing to keep him from landing too hard.

“Sir?” JARVIS inquired.

“Get somebody down here to help!”

“Of course.”

He tried to prop Clint up, but his muscles had started to go rigid, and his skin felt chilled. He shook him, but got no response.

“Damnit, Clint… what the hell are you doing now? JARVIS, what the hell is wrong with him?”

“I certainly don’t have any idea.”

“That’s not very helpful…”

Steve must have been somewhere nearby, because he was the first person to come bursting through the main doors of the lab. He spotted the two men on the floor.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. We were working on some stuff and he just… went pale, and then he went out. Fast. I don’t know…”

Steve pressed his fingers against Clint’s throat. “He’s cold… his pulse is slow. That can make you drop your blood pressure and pass out… it’s cold in here, but not that cold.”

“The computers,” Tony said, gesturing at the lab’s rows and rows of servers and computer equipment. “They generate a lot of heat. We have to keep the lab cool.”

Natasha arrived with the others close on her heels, and there was a minute of general chaos with everyone talking at once before Thor firmly pushed the others aside and picked Clint up.

“Where can I put him?”

“There’s a cot over there,” Bruce said.

Thor nodded and, with great care, stretched Clint out on the cot, tipping his head back to study his face and murmuring something for only Clint to hear.

“What’s going on?” Natasha demanded.

“It’s pretty much just like when we found him in the shower and he was like this,” Tony said. “He came out of that once we got him warmed up, but it took him a while to come back, and he wasn’t in good shape.”

“I don’t understand this,” she said, shaking her head. “I checked the records… I even talked to one of the guys. The other people Loki took… this isn’t happening to them. The ones that survived the attack on the helicarrier, and Selvig… all of them had some psychological symptoms, but none of them had anything like this.”

“He didn’t have to break them the same way he broke Clint,” Tony said.

The others looked at him.

“What do you mean?” Steve asked.

“Think about it,” Tony said. “It’s not that hard to override people when it comes to following orders. I mean, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are trained to follow orders. It’s what they do. All Loki had to do was tweak whose orders they thought they were supposed to be following. It’s not that hard to override somebody’s moral compass, either, whatever you want to think… ask the Captain.”

Steve nodded grimly. “It’s not, unfortunately. I saw it happen to a whole country full of people… following a leader and doing things… unbelievably horrible things… because they were orders and they were following them.”

“And Selvig…” Tony went on. “Shit… the Tesseract was his obsession anyway. All Loki did was basically give him the keys to it.”

“What does that have to do with Clint?”

Tony glanced at Thor, who shrugged.

“If any of them don’t know it, they might as well know it now.”

“Yeah,” Tony said, taking a deep breath. “Like I said, it’s not that hard to get into someone’s head and make them follow your orders. You don’t even need god-powered-mind-control to do that. It’s... we all have a sense of self-preservation when it comes to our own bodies. It’s deeper than following orders and deeper than moral decision-making… it’s something in your brain, in the part of your brain that doesn’t _think_ … it just _acts_ … and no matter what someone has told you or what orders you’ve been given…”

Natasha lowered her head. “Clint was his prize. Loki wasn’t just going to use him to get things done… he wanted to play with him. Make the famous Agent Barton into his toy.”

Tony nodded. “You know Clint didn’t just… let that happen.”

“Hell, no,” she said, fists clenching. “So Loki broke him. Took him apart and broke him so that he could make him…”

“You have to get a lot deeper into someone’s head to do that,” Bruce said quietly. “A whole lot deeper. You’d have to get into parts of them that…”

Thor sighed and ran a hand through Clint’s hair. “Loki would not be at all adverse to breaking someone in such a way if it suited his purposes. But he had to know how damaging…”

“He didn’t care,” Natasha said. “You heard what he said during the interrogation on the helicarrier. He didn’t intend to let Clint live anyway. He knew how badly he’d fucked him up. I think that’s why he let him go… he knew he wasn’t going to be much use for much longer.”

“If you hadn’t freed him, Loki’s control would have destroyed him,” Thor said. “But even though Loki may have damaged him, he is far from here now and has no power left to do any more harm…”

Tony cleared his throat. “See, I think Loki might not have to actually be here anymore to be able to do some harm.”

Bruce glanced at him. “Did Clint tell you something?”

Tony quickly related what Clint had said about Loki.

“Shit,” Natasha said, her eyes wide. “He’s right… I wouldn’t have been able to get him back. Nobody would have. If Loki had realized he could have had that kind of power…”

“And Loki would have very much enjoyed that kind of power,” Thor said.

“How did he not figure that out?” Bruce asked.

“His own arrogance,” Thor said. “He has never understood that being able to control someone doesn’t mean you truly know anything about them.”

Natasha rubbed her forehead. “So why do you think Loki can still hurt him, Tony?”

Thor glanced at Tony before answering for him. “Loki can’t hurt him. But Clint can use Loki to hurt himself.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that even if you did get Loki out of his head, Clint’s still keeping him there,” Tony said.

“I thought he was put away where he couldn’t…”

“It’s not Loki,” Thor said. “Well, not directly, anyway.”

“It’s Clint’s own personal Loki in his head,” Tony said. “And I don’t know how the fuck you get rid of that… especially when part of him _wants_ it there.”

 

 

 

 

Clint opened his eyes and found himself looking up at soot-darkened gray stone walls and an arched ceiling lost in dimness above him. The floor beneath him was as cold as laying on a frozen pond, but with the roughness of stone instead of the slickness of ice.

“Welcome to what I now call home, Agent Barton.”

Clint raised his head. Loki was sitting on a stool in the middle of the room, watching him intently, dressed only in plain gray clothes. Other than another stool and a fire burning low in a hearth in the corner of the room, there were no other furnishings, no windows, no doors. Still, Loki’s hair was sleek and his expression untroubled.

“You’re shaking,” he observed.

“It’s cold,” Clint muttered, forcing his stiff muscles to comply enough to prop him up on his elbows.

Loki rose from his stool and offered Clint a hand, helping him to his feet. He stumbled, and Loki gestured to one of the stools.

“Sit, Agent Barton. I am poorly equipped to receive guests in comfort.”

Clint let himself sink onto the stool and looked up at Loki. “Why am I here?”

“I wasn’t expecting company,” Loki said.

“You’re… this isn’t real.”

Loki smiled. “I am hardly in a position to confirm or deny my own reality. But you, Agent Barton, are here for a reason, are you not?”

“Fuck if I know.”

Loki shrugged. “I have the better part of eternity to chat. You, on the other hand, will very shortly become too cold to function properly and will eventually die.”

Clint tried to think. “I owe you something.”

“Oh?”

He stumbled to his feet. Loki remained still, watching him curiously, even as Clint took a few steps toward him and lashed out with a sudden right hook that would have put any unsuspecting human opponent on the ground unconscious. Loki’s head barely moved, and after a moment he raised his hand and rubbed his jaw thoughtfully.

“Did that make you feel better?”

Clint studied his fist numbly. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t want revenge, little Hawk. You want relief from your pain. And your friends are too kind-hearted to give you what you need, so you came to me.”

Clint shook his head. “I don’t need anything from you.”

“No?”

“No. Fuck you. I’m…”

Loki’s hand shot out and clenched around his throat, tightening. Clint flailed and kicked at him, but Loki ignored his attempts, and his grip tightened even more, until Clint felt his feet lose contact with the floor and realized he was now looking down at Loki’s still-calm face. He tried one more time to kick him, but every struggle drained him more, and white and black spots were starting to flicker across his vision as he fought for air.

“You need me, little Hawk,” Loki said. “And you know you do.”

 

 

 

 

Natasha was about to say something else, but Clint, who had been quite still, suddenly jerked and shuddered, and then his back arched as he struggled to breathe. It was as abrupt as if someone had put a rope around his throat, and even as the others were thinking this, livid red marks began to trace their way around his neck, appearing from nowhere.

“What the hell is happening to him?” Tony demanded.

“He can’t breathe,” Steve said anxiously. “Do something.”

“Do what?” Tony exclaimed.

Bruce shook his head. “Wait.”

The others looked at him, confused.

“Wait? Just let him…”

“Think about it,” Bruce said. “Nobody else is doing this to him, which means he’s doing it to himself. And if he cuts off enough of his air supply and passes out, it’ll stop.”

“What if it doesn’t?”

“Got any better ideas?” Bruce asked.

No one answered, but all of them dropped their eyes; it was too hard to watch Clint’s face contort as he struggled and the red marks on his throat became more distinct as the invisible grip cut off his breath.

“Damnit…” Natasha muttered. “Make it stop.”

“I don’t know how,” Thor said, slumping against the wall with his head in his hands.

“We can’t just let him die…”

“He’s not going to die,” Tony said. “Bruce has to be right… he can’t keep this up much longer.”

 

 

 

 

 

“You’ve told me all the things I should have known when I had you in my possession,” Loki said, stepping closer to the wall with Clint’s feet still kicking weakly inches off the ground. “What fun we could have had…”

Clint felt himself starting to drift, and heard Loki’s voice only distantly.

“Oh, no,” Loki said. “Not yet.”

After the frigid cold of the air in the room, the feeling of heat against Clint’s back was startling enough to bring back some semblance of consciousness. He realized that the stone walls were radiating a powerful, intense heat, and somewhere in his brain it registered that of course the way to imprison frost was with fire. Then Loki lifted him higher and slammed his back against the wall, and every trace of thought was overwhelmed by the shock of searing pain as the hot stone burned into his skin.

Loki watched his face with a combination of intensity and amusement. “Is that almost enough? A bit more?”

He pushed harder, and the stone dug into Clint’s back and shoulders. His consciousness flickered and wavered, but he was agonizingly aware of the feeling of his skin blistering, peeling, charring, of the muscles beneath the skin screaming as the fire burned into them, of the smell of his own body smoldering against the rock. He would have screamed, would have broken and begged for it to stop, but it wouldn’t have mattered. He had enough time to wonder, in a moment of clarity, if he was going to die, and whether it would feel like falling.

 

 

 

 

All of them jumped, startled out of their agonized waiting, when Clint flailed against the cot and his body arched as tight as one of his bows. Thor grabbed for him and pressed his shoulders down to keep him from ending up on the floor as he rolled, his hands gripping frantically at nothing.

“Oh, fuck… what is that?” Natasha asked.

None of them could answer her, but they stared as a flare of red flashed across his back and over the skin of his shoulders, creeping up his sides and his neck, livid and painful-looking. Even as these new and disturbing marks spread, though, Clint’s fight against Thor’s hands pressing him down started to weaken, and then he went limp, collapsing back against the cot, gasping in a deep, ragged breath and then another. Natasha slumped against Steve in relief, and Tony and Bruce both breathed a silent “I told you so” at exactly the same time, and Thor looked up, his face brightening.

As his breathing evened, the red flares on his neck and body began to fade, until the skin was completely unmarked. Bruce checked him over quickly.

“I think he’s all right. I mean, physically, at least. His pulse is pretty fast but he’s still getting his breath back, and he’s not quite as cold… we should get him out of here, though. The lab’s the coldest place in the whole building.”

“I’ll take him to my room,” Thor said.

“Use one of the guest rooms,” Natasha said.

Thor cocked his head. “What’s wrong with my room?”

“The guest rooms are pretty much empty, except for basic necessities,” she said, her face grim. “Your room… all our rooms… have things in them. Maybe sharp things, or… there’s not much Clint can’t use as a weapon if he wants to.”

“Are we officially activating the protocol?” Tony asked. “Because I know there is one, but…”

Natasha sighed. “Not officially, no, because I don’t want S.H.I.E.L.D. getting word of it. But yes… I’m activating the protocol. He’s to be watched at all times… someone has to be with him. If he’s in the bathroom, someone has to be right outside and JARVIS needs to notify them if he seems to be doing anything questionable. You need to remove his access to all door locks so he can’t lock himself in or us out of anywhere. And his access to any of the training rooms and the target range… and the lab, too. There need to be at least two people in the building at all times, including the person that’s watching him… and he can’t leave here without at least two of us with him.”

“Two of us?” Tony asked.

“Thor or Steve might be stronger than he is, but he thinks fast, and I know you and Bruce are the geniuses around here, but Clint’s pretty fucking smart and he’ll think of something you haven’t.”

“I don’t like this,” Tony said uneasily.

“You think I do?” Natasha snapped. “You have no idea what Clint and I have lived through together. You have no idea… the way we’ve had to trust each other. He’s never going to forgive me for this… but I’ll never forgive myself if I let something else happen to him.”

Thor brushed her shoulder as he stepped past her. “I think he will forgive you, when all is said and done. He loves you. Tony, will you show me to the guest room?”

“What? Oh. Yeah.”

Thor lifted Clint with a lack of effort that reminded them he was far less human than he looked.

“I’ll follow you.”

 

 

 

 

Tony left Thor and Clint at the door to the guest room and turned to stumble back to the elevator, where he was surprised to find Bruce waiting.

“What are you doing?”

“Waiting for you,” Bruce said, taking him by the arm and pulling him into the elevator. “My room, JARVIS.”

Tony rubbed his forehead. “Look, I’m not…”

“I know.”

The elevator stopped, and Tony allowed himself to be led out into the hall and into Bruce’s room. He didn’t realize how dazed and tired he was until it occurred to him that Bruce had managed to mostly undress him without him even being properly aware of it. Bruce stepped back, tossed his shirt and jeans aside, and tugged Tony down into the bed.

“I told you…”

“Stop,” Bruce said, rolling his eyes. “I didn’t bring you in here to molest you.”

“Then why am I here?”

“Because you can pretend to be Mr. Not-Give-A-Shit all you want, but that whole thing with Clint tore you up, and I figured if I didn’t bring you in here and put you to bed, you’d just wander around the building in a daze and end up staying up all night thinking.”

“I… might not have done that.”

Bruce chuckled and pulled him closer. “It’s all right. You’re not bad company when you’re asleep.”

Tony yawned and squirmed until he found a comfortable spot against Bruce’s chest. “You’re right, you know.”

“About you wandering around all night worrying about Clint? I know.”

Tony frowned. “Are you… I mean, is it…”

“You and Clint? No. It’s not a problem. He needs you… he needs all of us, I think, but yeah, he needs you. But… I really don’t see you two ever being… like this.”

“Yeah. I’m not seeing that either.”

“Well, there you go.”

Tony yawned again and tried to settle in, but restlessness still crawled through him. Bruce muttered something and pulled him in closer and draped an arm and a leg over him, pinning him down to the mattress, and Tony squirmed a bit against the added weight, then let himself relax and doze off.

 

 

 

 

Clint was still chilled, but by the time Thor had settled them both in under the blankets, he had started to stir and say something that might have been words. As warmth from the body against his began to seep into him, he shifted and blinked and looked around with blank, dazed eyes.

“What… this isn’t…”

“Shh. It’s one of the guest rooms. It was closer to the lab.”

Clint muttered and rubbed his face. “Oh, hell. I was… wait.”

His hands drifted to his throat, and then to his shoulders, and Thor watched the bewilderment and the memories flash across his face. He stopped and turned his eyes on Thor.

“What happened?”

Thor looked back at him evenly. “You tell me, little Hawk. You were there.”

Whether it was the command in Thor’s voice or the exhaustion or just the lack of any good reason not to, Clint started talking. He found that even though he couldn’t remember anything Tony had said to him in the lab, he could remember every word Loki had spoken, and every expression on his face, even the one as he had looked up at him and watched him burn and writhe in pain.

When he had finished talking, he glanced at Thor again before turning away.

“I know. Say whatever you want.”

“I have nothing to say,” Thor replied quietly.

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t have anything to say that would change anything that happened,” he said. “I don’t know the answers. I don’t have solutions. I just know you’re here now.”

Clint nodded slowly and laid his head back down, weariness written across his face. “I feel… ugh. I don’t even know.”

“You need to rest.”

Clint’s eyes searched his face. “I need more than that. I need it all to go away. Please… you can…”

“No,” Thor said sharply.

Clint frowned. “Why not?”

“Because,” he said, his eyes stern and unyielding, “I will not be the one to finish what my brother started. I will not have your thoughts of me made bitter and poisonous by thoughts of him.”

For a long, quiet moment, he wasn’t sure if Clint was disappointed or angry or just confused.

“I didn’t… know it mattered,” Clint said quietly.

“What?”

“I didn’t know it mattered. To you. How I felt… or what I was thinking…”

Thor growled, frustrated. “How could you not know it mattered to me, you foolish, stubborn… do you think this is entertainment for me? That I enjoy being part of your pain and your hurt? That I’m here because it’s pleasure or some sort of fun for me?”

“Then… why?”

“Why? Because I want to help you. Or if I can’t help you, at least to offer whatever I can. Yes, it matters to me. Very much.”

Clint tried to think of some answer to this, but he was too tired, and he didn’t know if he had any of the words he wanted anyway. Instead, he lowered his head and buried his face in Thor’s chest and pulled himself as close as he could. Big arms wrapped around him and drew him in, protective and strong.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, not sure if Thor could hear him.

“I didn’t know you knew how to apologize, little Hawk.”

Clint sighed. “I’m not very good at it.”

“You need to sleep, my friend. If you keep talking, you may say something kind or generous that you regret in the morning.”

Clint couldn’t quite manage not to chuckle at that, but he also couldn’t quite manage not to fall asleep a heartbeat later.

 

 

 

 


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint realizes how concerned his teammates really are, but not before almost doing some serious damage... and almost having some done to him. Thor has at least a temporary solution.
> 
> My writing brain has not been cooperating, but I'm working on it... promise!

 

 

Clint woke to bright sunlight illuminating the blinds over the windows and Thor singing something that sounded vaguely like a battle march over the running water in the bathroom. His head hurt, but not enough to really bother him, and even if this wasn’t his bed, it was comfortable and warm.

“What the hell are you doing in there?” he called.

After a moment, Thor stuck his head out the door, blond hair wet and tangled, grinning.

“Having a shower. Would you like to join me?”

Clint stretched his legs and contemplated the offer for a moment and whether it would be more fun to just wait for Thor to come back to bed, but by then someone else might have come around and decided to interrupt them.

“I might have to do that,” he said, yawning. “Hey, JARVIS, lock the door.”

“I’m sorry, but you do not have the authorization to do that.”

Clint’s lazy mood snapped and he sat up abruptly. “What the fuck does that mean?”

He could hear Thor shouting something from the bathroom, but JARVIS was already answering him.

“You currently do not have authorization to lock doors, Agent Barton.”

“Why the fuck not?” he demanded.

“That authorization has been revoked at this time.”

“According to who?”

“Those are the instructions I was given.”

Thor shouted something else, but Clint wasn’t listening. He was already out of bed and grabbing for his pants, his hands tight and nearly shaking as he fumbled with the zipper and stumbled toward the door. He wasn’t sure it would open, but it did. Barging out into the hall, he paused for a moment to get his feet under him before stalking to the elevator.

 

 

 

 

Tony was only moderately awake and sprawled on the couch, his head pillowed on Bruce’s leg as Bruce ate cereal and watched the morning news. Natasha sat on the back of the couch with her legs crossed, balanced somewhat precariously and only half her attention on the TV, while Steve sat at a respectful distance but had half an eye on her, looking ready to shoot out an arm and catch her if she went over backwards, which she nearly did when JARVIS interrupted their silence with no pleasantries or greetings.

“Agent Barton is on his way to the living area and he appears to be extremely unhappy.”

Natasha regained her balance and hopped down from the couch, landing lightly. “Why?”

“He has been made aware of the removal of some of his access and authorization privileges…”

“Fuck!”

Steve looked at her with an expression somewhere between disapproving and astonished. Natasha rolled her eyes.

“I wanted to explain it to him before… shit.”

Tony sat up, rubbing his face and nearly knocking over Bruce’s cereal bowl. Clint stormed into the room, the rage tight in the muscles of his bare shoulders and chest, eyes flashing.

“Clint…” Natasha attempted.

“What the fuck did you do?” he demanded.

Natasha started to say something, but Tony interrupted her, suddenly on his feet and wide awake.

“She didn’t do anything. This is my building. I give JARVIS orders.”

“What did you do?”

“You know what I did,” Tony said evenly.

Clint’s face flushed. “You… what, is this supposed to be for my own good? Is that what kind of fucking game this is? What did you tell them, Natasha?”

“Leave her alone,” Tony said sharply. “She’s the one who’s supposed to be responsible for you and the only reason she hasn’t done what she was supposed to and turned you over to S.H.I.E.L.D. to deal with is because we wanted you here with us. I’m not going to let you throw her under the bus. We’re going to do whatever we have to do.”

Natasha was the only one who knew Clint well enough to recognize the danger in the arch of his shoulders and the angle of his jaw. Before she could react, though, Thor burst in, still dripping wet and dressed only in his shorts. He took a few steps toward Clint, but Natasha caught his eye and shook her head quickly, and he froze.

“Fine,” Clint said slowly. “Then I’m leaving. Go ahead and lock me in wherever you want. I’ll get away. I’ve gotten out of places with higher security than this. I’ll walk out of here.”

“I’m not going to lock you in anywhere,” Tony said. “But if you leave this building, I’m calling Fury and reporting that you’re loose in the city and you’re psychologically unstable and you’re dangerous, and then you’ll have a much, much bigger problem than just the five of us.”

Clint’s eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t do that.”

“Yes, I will,” Tony said.

“I’m not psychologically unstable and I’m not dangerous…”

“The fuck you’re not!” Tony exclaimed.

Natasha saw the movement in Clint’s right arm, knew exactly where his fist was going and what it would do when it got there, and knew Tony couldn’t read Clint like she could, couldn’t see the oncoming blow in the shift of his muscles. With a quick thought that hopefully he was either angry enough at Tony or still cared enough not to hurt her, she launched herself at him, hitting him from the side and taking both of them down to the floor with a hard thud.

Clint was stronger, but he hadn’t expected that, and suddenly he was face-down on the floor with Natasha straddling him, his arms pinned behind his back with painful force.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Clint. Please.”

“I can break you,” he growled.

“Thor, get his legs.”

He felt the enormously strong hands pinning his legs down, derailing the kick he was preparing to launch, and it hit him, finally, what they were trying to do, all of them, and the frustration and helplessness crashed over him, filling him with a moment of desperate, unreasoning panic that had never quite taken hold before, not like this, even with guns pointed at his face. His legs, his hands, his body, all under someone else’s control, and he had to do _something_.

Natasha felt it. “Clint, don’t.”

He slammed his forehead against the floor, hard enough to make white spots flash across his vision. He felt Natasha trying to pull him back but he hit it again, this time feeling blood start to trickle over his eyebrow.

He didn’t get to do it a third time, because something yanked him off the floor and flung him across the room and against the wall with such force that he assumed it was either Thor or a piece of heavy construction equipment. Then he felt a hand around his throat, pinning him to the wall, and even before he opened his eyes he knew not even Thor’s hands were that big. And, he thought, as he looked up, Thor wasn’t green, with a massive face that glared at him with unreadable dark eyes. And Thor wouldn’t kill him just for pissing people off… but the Hulk just might.

He heard Natasha somewhere off to his right.

“Oh, fuck, Clint, please don’t do anything stupid… please…”

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Thor start to move, but Natasha made a sharp, frantic motion, and Thor stepped back, as much aware as anyone that it was entirely possible the Hulk hadn’t gotten over his grudge against the Asgardian quite yet.

Clint stared at the huge face that was only a few feet from his own. The hand around his throat was firm enough to pin him to the wall, but the fingers had not tightened. The other massive green hand rose, reached toward Clint’s face, and he felt it rub across his forehead before the Hulk held it in front of his face, streaked with blood.

“Don’t,” he growled, his voice a monstrous echo of Bruce’s. Then, as if to make sure Clint understood, he jabbed him sharply with the bloody finger. “ _Don’t_.”

“Bruce,” Tony said quietly, and Clint realized he was much, much closer than he should be for his own safety.

The Hulk glared at him. “Not Bruce.”

“Yes, Bruce. Let go of Clint, please.”

The Hulk shook his head.

“Look, if you let go of him, we’ll take him somewhere safe. I promise. We won’t let him get hurt.”

The Hulk seemed to consider for a long moment, studying Clint’s face intently.

“Fix this,” he muttered, pointing to the gash on Clint’s forehead.

“We’ll fix it. We’ll take care of him. We won’t let anything happen to him.”

The hand around Clint’s neck was gone, and the Hulk took a few slow, wary steps backwards.

“Clint, we’re going out in the hall,” Natasha said quickly, the near-panic just under the steady tone of her voice as she appeared at his side. “Okay? We’re just going out in the hall.”

The Hulk grunted and nodded. Natasha took Clint by the arm and yanked, hard, dragging him out the door and into the hallway out of sight of the others before she slammed him against the wall with enough force to knock the wind out of him.

“What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?” she demanded.

He lowered his eyes. “I don’t know.”

She released him, stepped into the bathroom across the hall, and came back with a wet towel and pressed it to his forehead.

“It’s not even much of a cut. You know head wounds bleed like crazy,” she said. “Are you mad at me for taking you down?”

He struggled for a moment to reassemble the last few minutes. “No. I deserved it.”

She dabbed at the blood on his face, watching his eyes. “Clint, you know I activated the protocol, not Tony, right?”

“I know.”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

He nodded slowly. “I know. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

She laid a hand on his cheek and turned his head to face her. “We’re not going to let this break you. We love you. Not just me. It’s not just the two of us anymore. Tony would have let you hit him, you know. And Thor would have fought the Hulk, soaking wet, with no hammer, in his underwear, for you.”

Clint laughed bitterly. “Don’t kid yourself. Hulk and Thor would both have loved that.”

“You realize seeing you in danger was the first thing that’s set Bruce off like that since Loki, right? You realize how upset he had to be for him to let that happen? He _hates_ turning into the Hulk.”

Clint slid down the wall, and Natasha followed him down, kneeling in front of him with the cloth still pressed against his face.

“I don’t… this isn’t me. Except it is. I don’t know…”

“We’re trying to help you, Clint.”

“I don’t know if there’s help. I don’t know if it’s fixable. I don’t know… I can’t do this.”

“We can,” she said firmly. “Me, you, those guys in there… we’re going to fight for you.”

“Fight what? What the hell are you going to do? You know goddamn well this goes a long way farther back than Loki and S.H.I.E.L.D. and all of that. You know nobody’s going to snap their fingers and make it better and take this away.”

“We’re going to try,” she said.

Clint lowered his eyes as Steve stepped out into the hall.

“Are you all right?”

Natasha nodded. “I’m fine. What’s going on in there?”

“The Hulk is gone, but Bruce is pretty stressed out about transforming like that in the building with all of us there… and that he might have hurt Clint.”

“He didn’t hurt me,” Clint muttered. “He didn’t even bruise me.”

“I’ll tell him that. It’ll help.”

Steve stepped back, and Natasha took the cloth away from Clint’s head.

“See? Stopped bleeding already. I think…”

Clint looked up and past her shoulder, and she turned to find Thor looking down at them, his face solemn and unreadable, water still dripping from his hair. Clint could only look at him for a moment before dropping his gaze. Natasha slowly straightened up, watching both of them.

“He’s not hurt,” she said.

Thor nodded, still silent.

“What do you think we should do with him?” she asked.

Thor rumbled low in his throat. “I have a possibility.”

Natasha sighed. “Do I want to know what it is?”

“I won’t harm him,” he said quietly.

“I know you won’t,” she said, reaching up to touch his cheek. “Clint? I don’t really have any idea what to do with you right now, so unless you tell me otherwise, I’m going to give you to Thor.”

Clint nodded, his head buried in his arms. “Fine. I don’t care. Do whatever you want.”

Thor reached down, grasped him by the arms, and pulled him to his feet. Clint refused to look at him, and for a moment Natasha felt the urge to grab for him and pull him back, but she held herself back and watched them, Clint silent and resigned as a prisoner on his way to the executioner’s chamber, as Thor led him down the hall.

 

 

 

 

“What are you going to do to me?” Clint asked, as they stepped into Thor’s room and Thor closed the door behind them.

“I’m thinking,” he said.

“It won’t matter. I don’t care. Not right now.”

“I think you do,” Thor said, and seemed to have come to some kind of decision, because he straightened up and motioned to the bed. “Take off your clothes and sit down. Keep your eyes toward the door.”

Clint let his pants drop to the floor and sat down on the bed, looking numbly straight ahead. He could hear Thor rustling and unwrapping and handling something, and then he felt the bigger man’s weight on the bed behind him.

“The shop Natasha took us to was a marvelous place,” he said, taking one of Clint’s wrists in each hand. “They carry a remarkably high quality of leather, among other things.”

Clint expected his arms to be pulled behind his back, but instead, Thor reached around his body and pulled his wrists up against his chest before wrapping a long, soft strip of black leather around them, looping it several times in a variety of directions before pulling it tight and tugging the ends of the strap behind his back and knotting them tightly. Clint tested the binding and found his arms secured quite firmly against his chest. Then he found Thor kneeling in front of him, wrapping another strap of leather generously around his ankles and up his calves.

“I could kick you in the face right now,” he said dully, not even sure why he was saying it.

Thor glanced up at him, blue eyes inscrutable. “Try it.”

He secured the straps with a slipknot, then grabbed Clint’s legs and swung them up onto the bed. Clint watched, unable to even find the energy to be curious. He did come to life somewhat, and started to become slightly concerned, when Thor took another strap of leather and secured it tightly around his thighs, then took one end and looped it through the straps on his ankles and the other end through the straps on his wrists.

“What are you doing?” he asked warily.

Thor smiled. “Being thorough.”

He began pulling the straps tighter, and Clint stiffened his limbs, but it didn’t do any good; Thor was unreasonably strong, and in a few minutes he had Clint bound into a ball, his arms and legs bound tight against his chest. He squirmed and twisted, but he could move nothing but his fingers, his feet, and his head. He looked up at Thor and tested the bonds with more force, but they were obviously quite secure, and now, to his alarm, Thor was holding up a smooth, wide leather collar with a shiny metal buckle.

“Get that thing away from me,” he said.

Thor raised an eyebrow. “Tell me to stop.”

“Fuck…”

After having the Hulk’s massive hand around his neck, the collar was surprisingly soft, and Thor’s fingers were surprisingly gentle as they buckled it despite Clint’s attempts to twist away.

“There. Almost done,” Thor said cheerfully, as if talking about a recipe. He reached down beside the bed, grabbed another, shorter strap, and looped it through the metal ring on the front of the collar and then secured it to his bound wrists, leaving him enough slack to breathe easily, but not enough to raise his head.

“What am I supposed to do now?” Clint asked, shifting as much as he could.

“Whatever you want,” Thor said, and moved his chair to the foot of the bed so Clint could see him clearly as he sat down and arranged himself comfortably.

“What do you mean, whatever I want?” Clint demanded.

Thor shrugged.

“Fuck. Get this shit off of me. Where’s Natasha? What the hell is this supposed to be? Let me go! This isn’t… fuck…”

He realized his voice was starting to rise and that his muscles were starting to tense, but once the reaction had started he didn’t seem to be able to stop it. He tried to focus, to relax, to use all the things he knew from his training to wait and be calm, but something in his gut didn’t _want_ to be calm, and it was twining through the rest of his body, a crawling wave of something that was part panic and part frustration and part rage and part fear. He tried to kick, tried to twist his wrists loose, but there was no give, no escape. He fought harder, muscles tensing, his body taking over the struggle and abandoning all directives from his brain, writhing and jerking with as much strength as he had.

“You can tell me to make it stop,” Thor said.

But he didn’t.

At some point his brain seemed to step back from the entire situation, fully aware of the futility of the struggle even as his body continued to flail and exhaust itself against the unyielding straps. Slowly, the awareness began to creep in that there was far more fight there than just the frustrations of the last few days or weeks, that there was so much fight and anger that it seemed like once it had started, there was no choice but to let it burn itself out. He lost all sense of time, all awareness of anything except a vague and somewhat analytical sense of his body and the places the leather burned and dug into his skin even as his mind drifted farther and farther away. He realized that it must have been some length of time, because the slow burning exhaustion that started to overwhelm his muscles was the kind that only came after you’d pushed yourself too hard for much too long.

All the fight left him with a sharp exhale, and he felt himself slump against the bed, against the straps, loose and limp, unable to move even if he’d wanted to. His brain registered this sensation as well, and the curious peace that came with it.

The bed shifted, and he felt the straps loosen and unwind as Thor untied him, letting the bindings fall beside the bed until only the collar was left before carefully unbuckling it and letting it drop. He rolled Clint onto his back and tapped his cheek.

“Are you there, little Hawk?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“You’re not hurt?”

He shook his head slightly; it was the most he could manage for an answer. His eyes didn’t want to open, but he could hear Thor moving, opening a drawer somewhere, and then he was back, his hands cool and slick, and Clint thought absently that he really didn’t want to be forced back into awareness by being fucked, but that apparently wasn’t what Thor had in mind anyway. Instead, the hands began to move over his chest, his arms, down his legs, and he realized the cool stuff was something being rubbed into his skin, easing the burn where the leather had chafed and bitten into it. Thor didn’t miss a spot on him, from his ankles all the way up to gentle fingers smoothing the stuff around his neck, rolling him over to work in long strokes up and down his back and shoulders.

“Why are you so angry?” he asked.

Clint thought about it with a brain that seemed to be slogging through tar.

“It wasn’t supposed to be like this?” he said, not sure if his answer even made sense. “This isn’t… I wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was supposed to be stronger.”

He realized absently as he spoke that he wasn’t talking about Loki or about what was happening right now. He was talking about other things, so many other things, and no, he wasn’t going to think about those things. Not now. Not ever.

Thor must have felt the shift, because he rubbed his knuckles into Clint’s aching shoulders a little more firmly.

“Not now, little Hawk. You’ve used up all your fight for today.”

Clint relaxed, and the ugly dark things slipped back away where they belonged.

“What are you going to do with me?” he asked, his voice sounding slow and strange.

“I’m going to let you rest for a little while,” Thor said. “Then I’m going to wake you up and give you to Bruce and Tony.”

“Hmm? Bruce and Tony? What for?”

“Because I want to see what they’ll do with you,” Thor said, chuckling, “and you’ll still be too tired to hurt them if you take exception to it.”

“Mph,” Clint muttered, burying his face in the pillow. His brain wasn’t working enough to decide whether Thor was joking about that part or not, much less to decide whether he wanted him to be joking about it or not.

“You’re much more agreeable when you’ve been rendered speechless,” Thor observed.

“Fuck you.”

“Not entirely speechless, perhaps. But I suppose it’s the closest I’m likely to get.”

 

 


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor hands Clint over to Bruce and Tony to do whatever they want with. Of course, what else would they want to do with him?
> 
> I promise to update again soon... I will force my brain to comply.
> 
> Note: new threesome added to pairings list. Like anyone's going to complain.

Tony sprawled on Bruce’s bed, staring at the ceiling. “Why are we in your room?”

“Because this is where Thor told us to go.”

“If he’s just going to dump Clint with us to babysit, he could have brought him to the lab and we could have gotten some work done.”

Bruce rolled his eyes. “Don’t be an asshole.”

Tony sat up. “Why are you in such a foul mood?”

“Because I’m not sure Clint wants anything to do with me after… earlier.”

“You mean with the Other Guy? Why not? He didn’t hurt Clint. He didn’t leave a single mark on him. He was being protective.”

“He was still the Hulk.”

“Clint would probably take on the Hulk,” Tony mused.

Bruce scowled. “He wouldn’t have a chance. Thor and his stupid hammer were barely…”

“I didn’t mean he would take him on in a fight,” Tony said.

Bruce raised his eyebrows. “Are you insane?”

“Possibly. But Clint registers pretty high on the batshit crazy scale himself, you know. And unlike me, he doesn’t seem to have any objection to things that might seriously hurt him.”

“That’s _not_ going to happen. _Ever_. You know perfectly well the Other Guy doesn’t really take ‘no’ for an answer…”

“He wouldn’t hurt Clint,” Tony said, unconcerned.

“He wouldn’t hurt Clint _on purpose_ ,” Bruce corrected.

They were interrupted by a knock at the door. Tony motioned lazily, and the door slid open, revealing Thor in what had become his usual off-duty uniform of jeans and t-shirt and bare feet, while Clint, who was tossed over his shoulder, didn’t seem to have anything on except a pair of shorts. Of course, all Tony or Bruce could see of him was the lower part, his feet absently swinging in the air without any evident distress.

“What the hell is this?” Tony asked.

“He didn’t want to wake up. I thought he’d had enough sleep for now… more than a short nap, and he might start getting his uncooperative attitude back. I thought you two might enjoy him while he was in a more agreeable mood.”

He stepped past Bruce, motioned for Tony to move over, and then flipped Clint off his shoulder and down onto the bed with a single easy motion. Clint made a rude gesture in Thor’s general direction, but sprawled out on the bed, either too tired or otherwise just past the point of caring where he was or what he was doing. He glanced up at Tony.

“Hello.”

“What are we supposed to do with him?” Bruce asked.

Thor shrugged cheerfully. “Anything you like. He won’t complain.”

“Yes, I will,” Clint said.

“All right. He’ll complain, but he won’t care.”

“That’s about right,” Clint agreed, closing his eyes again.

“But what are we supposed to _do_ with him?”

Thor smiled, but there was something slightly weary about it. “As I said, anything you like. I need… I think knocking a few punching bags across the training room will improve my state of mind.”

“Are you all right?” Bruce asked.

“Of course, my friend. Just… need to unleash a bit of frustration, that’s all.”

He stepped back and closed the door. Tony and Bruce glanced at each other.

“You’re so fucking nuts you’ve even managed to stress Thor out,” Tony said.

Clint shrugged. “I didn’t ask him to deal with any of this.”

“You didn’t ask any of us to,” Tony said.

“Maybe everyone should try minding their own business,” Clint muttered.

“It’s not really going to be any use trying to have a conversation with you right now, is it.”

Clint shook his head. “Don’t waste your time. My brain’s pretty well shut off. I’m sure you can think of something else to do with me.”

Bruce glanced at Tony. “You want me to leave?”

“What for?” Tony asked, and Clint mumbled something along the same lines.

“Because… I mean, if you two…”

“Oh, no,” Tony said, chuckling. “As much fun as it is thinking about you watching me and him together, it’s a lot more fun thinking about you being part of it.”

“Is it,” Bruce said thoughtfully, studying the other two.

“Tell me you haven’t thought about it.”

“Oh, I’ve thought about it.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Bruce asked. “I mean, after what happened earlier?”

“Which part? The part where I threatened him or the part where the Hulk threw him across the room?”

Bruce scowled. “I’m not fucking around, Tony.”

“I’m not either,” Tony said, glancing down at Clint, who was watching them both with a lazy, half-conscious curiosity. “Clint? Help us out here.”

“Fuck off,” Clint said. “I don’t feel like being helpful.”

Tony crossed his arms.

“Well, shit. JARVIS, can you get Natasha on the line for us?”

Clint rolled his arms over his face. “Fuck. Don’t call her.”

JARVIS took a moment to respond. “I’m sorry, but Agent Romanov is in her room and does not wish to be disturbed unless it is an emergency requiring her immediate intervention.”

Clint chuckled. “She’s probably with Captain Hot Pants.”

“If you are referring to Captain Rogers,” JARVIS said, sounding slightly annoyed, “he is in the library. Do you require his services?”

“No,” Tony said. “Agent Romanov won’t talk to us?”

“She has asked to be left undisturbed.”

Clint frowned. “She won’t even talk to me?”

“She especially does not wish to be disturbed by you, Agent Barton.”

Clint blinked, sitting up. “Why not?”

“Gee, can’t imagine,” Tony said. “She’s the one who’s supposed to be responsible for you and she worries about you constantly… you forgetting what you made her do to you this morning? I don’t think she was happy about it.  And I doubt she’s happy about the fact that she thinks she was supposed to be managing the situation and it ended up with the Hulk showing up and throwing you across the room?”

Clint lowered his eyes. “Yeah, I guess there’s that.”

Bruce gave Tony a sharp look. Tony raised an eyebrow. “Bruce, would you go up to the kitchen and get us a bottle of scotch and some glasses?”

“Sure. How long am I supposed to stay gone?”

“Just stroll up and get the scotch and stroll back, and that’ll be fine.”

Bruce slipped out, closing the door and muttering something about Tony’s marvelous talent for subtlety and tact.

 

 

 

Tony flopped down on the bed next to Clint, who rolled over to avoid looking at him.

“Would it make you feel better to punch me now that Nat’s not here to stop you?”

“No,” Clint said, his voice muffled. “I don’t think I need to be any more of a dick than I’ve already been.”

“Well, it’s not like you’ve been under any kind of pressure or anything.”

“That’s no excuse for… everything. Nat’s upset; Bruce hates turning into the Other Guy; I was ready to break your jaw… shit, Thor’s even pissed off at me.”

“I don’t think he’s pissed off. I think he’s worried, pretty much just like the rest of us.”

“Yeah. Great.”

Tony reached over and hooked an arm around Clint and pulled him closer. Clint resisted for a moment, but with no enthusiasm, and he allowed Tony to pull him in and drape a leg over him to keep him there.

“Are you listening?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Clint muttered.

“Good. Because I’m not very good at this, so take it for what it’s worth, okay?”

Clint nodded.

Tony exhaled. “All right. I love Bruce. I mean, not that I’ve told him that, not in so many words… he’d be even more of an insufferable pain in the ass if I did… but yeah, I love him.”

“That’s good.”

“I’m not finished, asshole. No interrupting. I was trying to say… I love him, all right, but… I love you, too. I know I’m not very good at any of that kind of thing, but you… it’s not just me. Natasha loves you. I’m pretty sure Bruce pretty much does too, considering that the Hulk is so protective of you that seeing a drop of blood on you was enough to set him off. And Thor… I don’t know how they do love in Asgard. Probably present a troll’s head on a stick and then fuck each other on the floor of the throne room, for all I know. But… stop laughing; you’ll fucking distract me.”

“Sorry.”

“I’m trying to tell you that we love you, and that’s not going to change, and you’re going to have to get it through your head eventually.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Clint said, but he rolled over and looked at him.

Tony shook his head. “Look, Clint, I know what you’ve got in your head.”

He felt Clint’s muscles tighten and saw a trace of alarm flash in his eyes. “What?”

“I know. I have one too. Except he didn’t have to use magic to get into my head. He spent pretty much his whole life till the day he died making sure he was in there and I’d never be able to get rid of him, no matter what I did. I won’t call him my father anymore… I haven’t called him that for a long, long time, but that hasn’t made him go away. And because now he’s in my head, he knows exactly what he did to me, and exactly how bad it hurt, and he’s always waiting for me to have just one moment when I start doubting myself… and that’s when he can pull me down. And sometimes, when it’s really bad, he’s been able to keep me down there for days… Pepper’s seen it. She would just cancel all my meetings and tell everyone I was sick and wait for me to come out of it.”

Clint shuddered, and Tony pulled him closer. He heard the door as Bruce quietly slipped in, but he didn’t say anything. Instead, he set the bottle and glasses down on the dresser and sat down on the bed, laying his hand on Clint’s back. When Clint reached over his shoulder to grab Bruce’s hand and pull at it, Bruce kicked his shoes off and stretched out beside him, reaching over him to grab for Tony, squeezing Clint securely between their bodies. Clint relaxed, letting Bruce press and mold him against Tony’s body, and heard Tony’s sharp inhale as their hips met, felt Bruce shiver against his back.

“Fuck. Tony wasn’t kidding, was he? You _are_ like a drug or something…”

“I told you,” Tony said, his voice rough.

Bruce ran a hand over Clint’s shoulder. “That hasn’t always been a good thing, has is, Clint.”

Clint shook his head slightly.

“Is it okay now?”

He nodded.

“There’s one thing that’s not right,” he said, after a moment.

“What?”

“You both have an awful lot of clothes on.”

Tony laughed. “We can probably fix that.”

“Probably?” Bruce said. “I’m surprised you haven’t invented a machine to get you naked faster.”

“Well, if society didn’t have to require stupid things like clothes…” Tony muttered, pulling his shirt over his head while Clint’s hands worked at his belt.

Bruce sighed and unbuttoned his shirt. “Just because you want to see everyone naked…”

“I do _not_ want to see _everyone_ naked,” Tony said, with a hitch in his words as Clint jerked his pants down over his hips. “I could just avoid looking at the unattractive ones.”

He leaned over Clint and reached for Bruce’s jeans. Clint took the opportunity to assist with the proceedings by sliding down a bit further and managing to get rid of the rest of what he and Tony were wearing while using his convenient location to swipe his tongue up the length of Tony’s cock.

“Fuck!’ Tony gasped.

Bruce laughed. “Are you being distracted? I guess I’d better just do this myself.”

He finished the clothing removal that Tony had started, since Tony seemed to have completely forgotten the task at hand. Admittedly, Bruce thought, it would be hard to keep your mind on anything else with Clint’s powerful archer’s hands gripping your ass while his mouth was busy on your cock. The low moan from Tony, and the small sound of smug amusement from Clint, sent a pulse of heat through Bruce, and he reached down and grabbed a handful of Clint’s dark blond hair and tugged on it. Tony whined as Clint let himself be pulled back up between them, greeting Tony with a smirk and a lick along the side of his jaw before giving Bruce a curious glance over his shoulder.

“Did you want something?”

“Is this a trick question?”

Clint murmured something in Tony’s ear. Tony shivered and closed his eyes.

“Oh, fuck, yes.”

“What?” Bruce demanded.

“Fuck, yes, I want to see you fuck him.”

Bruce had to close his eyes for a moment to let that idea float through his head, and by the time he was done, he realized his hands were already on Clint’s sides, pulling him back against him. Tony grinned, and Clint kissed him, hooking his arms around Tony’s neck and tangling his hands in his hair. Tony got his mouth free just long enough to raise his head and look at Bruce.

“Well? I saw your brain start to melt when I said that. Get to it, or Clint’s likely to get bored and have me do it.”

Clint snickered and used his grip on Tony’s hair to pull him back down. Bruce reached for the nightstand, which unfortunately necessitated losing the extremely pleasant full-body contact with Clint, but only for long enough to fumble in the drawer and locate the necessary supplies.

Tony knew Bruce was doing something interesting when Clint’s fingers in his hair abruptly clenched into fists, and he moaned against Tony’s mouth. Bruce hesitated.

“You sure you…”

Clint half-turned his head, breathless, eyes dark. “Stop asking stupid questions. You two are worse than… fuck!”

Apparently Bruce had come to the conclusion that the best way to deal with Clint’s attitude was to properly distract him, because Clint’s fists pressed hard into the back of Tony’s neck and he buried his face in Tony’s shoulder, breathing hard.

“Am I hurting you?” Bruce asked.

“Have you _seen_ Thor?” Clint muttered.

“He’s still being an asshole. He must be okay,” Tony said.

At some point, though, Tony’s entire attempt to keep his head clear in case something went wrong completely went out the window. It might have been partly because nothing seemed to be going wrong; on the contrary, things seemed to be going extremely well, with Clint’s head thrown back against Bruce’s shoulder and his hands grasping at Tony’s hair. It might also have had something to do with Clint’s cock, hard and slick and hot, rocking against Tony’s with every move any of them made, and Tony trying to resist the urge to thrust back against him because he wasn’t ready for this to be over yet and if he started doing that it definitely would be.

Then Clint’s eyes flew open and locked on Tony’s, and he pulled him into a breathless, desperate kiss. Tony knew what it felt like to have Clint fall apart in his arms, but Bruce was finding out for the first time, and even if Tony hadn’t been close already, having both of them like this would have put him there. He wasn’t sure whose name he was saying, or if he was even producing anything that sounded like either of them, but it didn’t matter at the moment.

 

 

 

 

For what seemed like a long time, none of them moved, or wanted to, despite the stickiness and the heat. Clint squirmed into a slightly more comfortable position and let his head rest on Tony’s arm.

“You all right?” Tony asked.

Clint nodded, and there was definitely at least a trace of a smile.

Bruce chuckled. “I think the Other Guy is confused. I don’t think his Clint-protection complex had any contingencies for fucking him.”

“I’d let him,” Clint murmured.

“That’s because you’re a fucking nut job,” Tony said.

“Mmm-hmm.”

Tony raised his head to grin at Bruce. “You know, for being mortals and not exactly being twenty anymore, we must not be doing too bad a job, if we can keep him entertained after he’s been off playing with the Chippendale Thunder God.”

Clint yawned. “It’s different.”

“What is?”

“Him. You guys.”

“Hmm. Maybe that’s because we don’t dispense electrical shocks during sex,” Bruce said.

“He’s not afraid to hurt me.”

“He seems to know what he’s doing,” Tony said, “but I don’t think he likes doing it.”

“I didn’t ask him to,” Clint said. “But I guess I didn’t ask for this, either. And no, I’m not complaining.”

Bruce propped himself up on one elbow and looked at him with mock concern. “Clint’s not complaining? We must have broken him.”

Clint grinned. “Have to try harder than that.”

Eventually Bruce wandered off and came back with a towel and pried Tony and Clint apart long enough to clean up a bit. Seeing how quickly they curled back together, he wondered if he should leave, but then again, this was his bedroom, and then Tony looked up at him and held out his hand.

“What?”

“You’re not going anywhere. Get back here.”

“If you insist,” Bruce said, as he stretched back out on the bed and felt Clint shift almost unconsciously, seeking maximum contact with both of them at once.

“I insist,” Tony said. “If nothing else, I’m not explaining this alone to Natasha later.”

 

 

 

 

 


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint's pretty sure he can't trust anybody at this point. Except for one person who seems to know things about him that no one else knows... and who really isn't supposed to be there. And who he knows he can't trust.

Clint slept, apparently unaware of anything, while Bruce and Tony sat at the table with the bottle of scotch between them. Bruce had at least taken the time to put his pants back on; Tony had only been convinced to bother with his boxer shorts because the chair was cold.

“So,” Bruce said, pouring them both another glass.

“So what?” Tony asked, watching him.

“So…” Bruce said, setting down the bottle. “Can there be… you know… an us…”

“You mean me and you?”

“Yeah. But can there be an us and can there be an _us_?”

His first gesture was from himself to Tony and back; his second gesture swung out and encompassed the figure sprawled on the bed.

Tony contemplated the question through the golden, wavering lens of a glass of fine scotch before taking a sip.

“I don’t see why not, really… I mean, it’s not like any of us are normal and it’s not like I’m capable of having normal relationships anyway. I think I’ve firmly established that. And besides, it’s really not the same… being with you, being with him… and then being with both of you… shit. All of the above are great.”

Bruce chuckled and emptied his glass. “Like you were sex-deprived before.”

“Yeah, but before I had to figure out how to get rid of them without dealing with them afterwards,” Tony said, tipping his glass back to try to keep up with Bruce’s drinking pace.

“You haven’t had anyone escort me out of the building yet.”

“I don’t want you to go away,” Tony said, reaching for the bottle.

“Should we be getting drunk if we’re supposed to be watching him?”

“Does he look like he’s going to do anything any time soon? He’s sleeping like a brick. Besides, I can’t talk about things like this unless I’m getting drunk.”

Bruce shrugged. “Well, all right, then.”

“Besides, everyone’s home. We can always give Thor or Captain Vanilla a yell if there’s any trouble.”

“You think he’s still Captain Vanilla after Natasha’s been educating him?”

Tony shrugged. “Just because she convinced him God wouldn’t smite him dead if he stuck his dick in something doesn’t mean she’s turned him on to kink.”

“You didn’t see the stuff she picked up at that store.”

“I didn’t see the stuff _you_ picked up at that store, either,” Tony pointed out.

“Haven’t had the right opportunity.”

“Oh? Really? Because there are so many times when I _don’t_ want to have sex…”

There was a knock at the door.

“JARVIS?” Tony asked.

“Thor wishes to come in.”

“Oh. Well, let him in.”

The door slid open, and Thor strolled in, his usual broad grin back in place.

“Good evening, friends… drinking?”

Tony raised his glass. “Just a little.”

Thor frowned. “Is there a problem?”

“I do occasionally drink even when there’s not a problem,” Tony said.

“Everything’s fine,” Bruce said. “At least, as far as we can tell. Clint’s been sleeping and we’ve been sitting here talking.”

“You appear to be reasonably coherent,” Thor observed.

“It takes a lot more than two drinks to make me incoherent,” Tony said.

“I came to see if you wanted to join the rest of us for an evening meal,” Thor said. “Natasha has ordered food to be delivered… I’m not sure what she ordered for the rest of you, but I know she was happy to oblige my request for pizza.”

“Gentlemen, Agent Romanov has ordered several pizzas for Thor and for anyone else who wishes to have some, and has also ordered from Mr. Stark’s favorite Thai restaurant.”

“I didn’t know they delivered,” Bruce said.

“They deliver here,” Tony said. “I usually order a lot of food, and JARVIS has standing orders to tip generously.”

“You want to wake Clint up?” Bruce asked. “He’s probably hungry. Or he should probably eat, even if he’s not hungry.”

Thor nodded. “I’ll wake him.”

“Probably a good idea,” Tony said. “I’ve noticed that when he’s sleeping, he has a tendency to wake up swinging if you’re not careful.”

“I think he does that even if you are careful,” Thor said, stepping toward the bed. “But you two smelling like alcohol probably wouldn’t help.”

“Why?”

“Have you not noticed that despite his willingness to use any other available substance to manage his frustrations, our Hawk doesn’t drink?”

“Doesn’t he?” Tony asked, frowning. “I’m sure I’ve…”

“Now that Thor mentions it,” Bruce said, “I don’t think he does drink. Ever.”

“JARVIS?” Tony inquired.

“I have no record of Agent Barton consuming alcohol, and according to his S.H.I.E.L.D. file he does not drink. There is a note from one of the mission debriefing staff that individuals under the influence of alcohol appear to trigger physiological responses indicative of a defensive reaction…”

“Is that kind of thing in all our records?” Bruce asked.

“You know, you could have mentioned that before,” Tony said, quickly grabbing the bottle and glasses and heading for the door.

“You didn’t ask, Mr. Stark,” JARVIS said. “And Dr. Banner, S.H.I.E.L.D. has full psychological and physiological assessments of all of you, including stress tests and other procedures to identify situations that might trigger an emotional response affecting each individual’s performance.”

“All of us?” Bruce asked.

“Actually, they lack any significant amount of data on Thor, Dr. Banner, but perhaps this is due to his proclivity for damaging sensitive electronics.”

Thor smiled to himself. Tony reappeared.

“Maybe we should have a shower before we go have dinner with everybody,” he said, reaching for Bruce’s disheveled curls. Bruce swatted his hand away.

“Yeah. You’re probably right. Maybe we should go up to your room and let Thor wake up Sleeping Beauty… I’m thinking maybe we shouldn’t be around until we’ve washed up and had a cup of strong coffee or something.”

Thor nodded. “That may be wise. You both do have a certain… odor, besides the beverage, of course, and I suspect that Natasha will have something to say about it if you arrive for dinner like that.”

“Is he saying we smell like sex?” Tony asked.

“I think he’s saying we stink,” Bruce said.

“If _we_ smell, Clint probably needs bathed in bleach to be presentable,” Tony said.

Thor chuckled. “I had noticed that. It appears that you two were able to find some way to keep yourselves occupied with him…”

Bruce turned slightly red. Tony didn’t bother.

“Let’s go get decent,” Tony said. “Dinner sounds good, actually.”

“There’s not enough soap in this tower to make you decent, Stark,” Bruce muttered. “And I’m not thinking from the way you’re looking at me that this is going to be the world’s cleanest shower, either.”

Tony smirked. “You didn’t think I’d waste an opportunity to have you naked, did you?”

“Damnit,” Bruce muttered, turning even redder and glancing at Thor, who grinned with unabashed amusement.

“Why do you look so embarrassed? The proposed activity doesn’t sound at all unpleasant.”

Bruce muttered something and walked away. Tony followed him, grinning broadly.

Thor sat down on the bed. Clint felt the shift in weight and stirred, mumbling in his sleep.

“Wake up, little Hawk.”

Clint blinked, then jerked upright, looking around with blank alarm. “What the hell…”

“Easy. This is Dr. Banner’s room. Everything is fine.”

Clint exhaled. “Right. Where did Bruce and Tony go?”

“They’ve gone to have a shower before dinner. It has been suggested that perhaps you should have one too.”

Clint raised his arm and sniffed. “Ugh. Yeah. Natasha will give me seven kinds of hell if… why do I smell whiskey?”

“There was a bottle in one of the cabinets, and…”

“Thor?” Clint said, giving him a sharp look.

“Yes?”

“You suck at lying. Seriously. You’re terrible at it.”

Thor lowered his head. “I suppose it’s not something I’ve practiced much.”

“You don’t have to cover for Bruce and Tony if they wanted to have a drink. They probably don’t know… wait a minute. How do you know? They know now, don’t they.”

“Apparently S.H.I.E.L.D. knows everything, and if they know it, Tony probably does too.”

Clint rubbed his forehead wearily. “Great. One more reason for all of them to think I’m fucked up.”

“We didn’t discuss the reasons for your…”

“It doesn’t need to be discussed,” Clint said sharply.

“I’m sorry,” Thor said. “I only wish to understand my friend better.”

Clint sighed. “Okay. I’m sorry for… look, I know someone has to babysit me wherever I go, so let’s go back to my room and I’ll get a shower and we’ll go have dinner.”

“Excellent,” Thor said. “I prefer my pizza while it’s still hot.”

 

 

 

It seemed to Clint like it had been a while since he’d been in his own room, and he was aware of Thor watching him carefully as he collected some clothes from the dresser and headed for the bathroom.

“I would gladly provide you with company, but it would probably delay our arrival at dinner,” Thor said.

“Yeah… and I’m hungry.”

He stepped into the shower, running the water hot enough to fill the room up with steam and redden his skin. He scrubbed himself with soap and didn’t realize until he reached to return the soap to its place that his grip had been tight enough to leave the bar squashed and misshapen.

Of course, Stark Tower had automatically defogging mirrors, so the reflection Clint stood looking at as he dried himself off was clear despite the steam still hanging in the air. When he finished rubbing his face and dropped his hands, though, his face was not the only one in the mirror.

His reaction came from training and instinct deeper than thought and he lashed out with a vicious kick at the figure behind him, but his foot connected only with empty air where it should have impacted a solid body. Clint staggered and regained his balance, heart pounding as he spun to face what he suddenly realized was an empty bathroom.

“You could let me speak before you strike at me,” a familiar voice said.

Clint jerked back around to face the mirror, seeing his own stunned face and, over his shoulder, Loki’s sleek dark hair and knowing smile.

“You’re not here.”

Loki shrugged. “Physically? No. They have no intention of letting me out of my hole in Asgard.”

“This is in my head. You’re not here. They took all your powers.”

“You’re correct about the latter, my Hawk, but mistaken about the former. I am here, because you invited me.”

“Fuck you. I didn’t invite you. This is… it’s all in my head. Just like it was when…”

“Oh, your visit to my prison? Yes, I suppose that was all in your head. But you came there willingly. And you’ve willingly allowed me to come here.”

Clint’s fists clenched. He glanced up at the camera on the wall, but he realized that it wasn’t angled to see the mirror. “I didn’t… I don’t want you here.”

“Ahh, but you do. Or I wouldn’t be here, and I am.”

“What do you want?”

Loki smiled. “I want to help you, little Hawk.”

“You’re a fucking liar.”

“You’re right. I don’t particularly care about helping you. But I am terribly, terribly bored, Agent Barton, and you are the most entertaining toy I’ve had in some time. And in exchange for your willingness to be played with, I can offer you something you need.”

“You don’t have anything I need.”

“No?” Loki asked, raising his eyebrows. “The others can’t give it to you, can they? Even my brother, with his skill in inflicting pain, can’t give it to you. Not what you really need.”

“And what’s that?”

“You’ve showed me your heart, Agent Barton. And it’s strong. But it’s empty. Empty and hollow. Your walls protect you from anyone realizing that you are too damaged to be capable of being fulfilled, being satiated, by the things that others are.”

“All S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are like that,” Clint said. “That’s…”

“You know that’s not true, little Hawk,” Loki said. “You know that void was there long before S.H.I.E.L.D. ever knew your name. You know it’s why everyone has always left you. You know it’s why these people, these people who talk about taking care of you, talk about loving you, will in the end retreat from you just to protect themselves from you…”

“Shut up,” Clint muttered, his jaw clenched, but despite the heat of the room he was shaking and there was no hiding it. His stomach twisted and for a moment he was glad he hadn’t eaten anything yet. “Shut up, and go away. They can make you go away.”

“The only one who can make you go away is you, little Hawk. And you won’t. Not until you understand what I have to offer you.”

Clint closed his eyes and leaned on the counter, feeling dizzy. Suddenly, he heard JARVIS’s voice from outside the bathroom door, speaking to Thor.

“… have detected an unusual fluctuation of some unknown type of energy. I informed Mr. Stark of it and he instructed that you retrieve Agent Barton immediately.”

The first thought that flashed through Clint’s head was relief, because when he opened his eyes Loki was gone, and Thor was barging into the bathroom. The second thought, though, nearly floored him.

JARVIS’s sensors wouldn’t have registered something unless something had actually _been there_.

“Little Hawk,” Thor exclaimed, grasping him by the shoulders to steady him and studying his face. “What happened? JARVIS said…”

Clint tried to breathe and clear his head. “I don’t know.”

“Did something happen? Was someone here?”

“I… don’t know. I can’t remember,” Clint said, and Clint was good at a lot of things, and lying was one of them. It wasn’t even really lying anymore; his career had made “truth” a negotiable and largely irrelevant concept and one he was fully capable of adapting to suit the situation.

“What do you remember?” Thor asked, frowning.

“I got out of the shower, and I was looking in the mirror… and then I heard JARVIS say something, and you were here.”

Thor sighed and rubbed his damp hair. “You look…”

“I don’t know. I feel a little shaky, but it’s going away.”

That, at least, was the truth. The more smoothly the lie flowed out of him, the more easily his body went along with it, as it was trained to. Thor looked him over again and released him, looking somewhat less anxious.

“Are you sure?”

Clint nodded. “Yeah. Maybe I just need to eat something. I haven’t been doing much of that lately, and I hear it’s supposed to be good for you.”

“JARVIS, do mortals become ill and unsteady if deprived of food?”

“Those symptoms would be consistent with a failure to consume sufficient nutrition,” JARVIS said. “Would you like me to calculate…”

“Look, let’s just go have dinner, and I promise I’ll eat way too much,” Clint said.

Thor grinned. “I didn’t know it was possible to eat too much.”

“It is if you don’t have an immortal’s stomach. Come on… they’ll be wondering where we are, and Steve will eat all that stuff with the spicy noodles.”

“I thought all Thai food was spicy noodles.”

“No… there’s also spicy rice, spicy soup, and spicy unidentifiable meat.”

“Ah. Thank you. That makes it much clearer.”

“Are you being a smartass?” Clint asked.

Thor chuckled. “Certainly not. Asses have many satisfactory uses, but intelligence is not one of the properties they’re noted for.”

“Yeah. Smartass. Let’s go eat.”

 

 

 

 

 

“What are you doing?” Tony asked, attempting to pull on his clothes and look over Bruce’s shoulder at the same time. “I thought we were going to eat.”

“If there’s anything left, after all that time we wasted,” Bruce muttered, turning the laptop screen away from Tony.

“I wouldn’t exactly call it wasted time,” Tony said.

“We both had to take another shower. That’s a waste of time _and_ water,” Bruce said.

“What are you looking at?”

Bruce sighed and turned the screen back. “Something that’s probably none of my business, or yours, but…”

“More stuff from S.H.I.E.L.D.’s files on Clint?”

“They collect a pretty thorough history on all their agents. They use it to screen for possible conflicts of interest or triggering situations or other things that might affect their performance under certain circumstances.”

“So…”

“So, was ‘pathologically abusive father’ one of the criteria they used to select members of this team?”

Tony frowned. “Not that I know of. But it wouldn’t totally surprise me, to be honest. Yours was... "

“So was Clint's. Apparently a serious alcoholic with a serious mean streak.”

“Well, that would probably explain why he doesn’t drink. The guy still around?”

“Both his parents have been dead since he was a kid. Drunk driver versus tree, apparently. He and his brother ended up in a group home…”

“Clint would have told you that if you’d asked,” Natasha said.

Bruce spun fast enough to nearly fall off his chair, and Tony, with only one leg in his pants, flopped back on the bed to keep from landing on the floor.

“Don’t you knock?” Bruce demanded.

She shrugged. “Not usually. I wanted to come see if you guys were planning on getting at any of the food before Steve and Thor make it disappear. Like I said, Clint would have told you about his father. It’s not a secret. He won’t tell you much about the group home… I don’t think it was a horrible place, but I guess it was pretty lonely and Clint’s brother decided there wasn’t any future for them there…”

“So that’s how they ended up circus performers?”

“Yeah. I’m sure they mention in his file that the two guys who trained him were both gamblers, drunks, and criminals themselves,” she said. “Clint doesn’t like to talk about them.”

“Things end up bad?” Tony asked.

“Well, one of them almost beat him to death when Clint found out he was stealing, and the other one shot him in the back after he talked Clint into one of his not-so-genius criminal exploits and it went wrong. That’s pretty much all you need to know and it’s all Clint would tell you if you asked, and as far as I know, it’s all S.H.I.E.L.D. has on him either.”

“Pretty much,” Bruce said. “Other than a bunch of psychological screenings and reports.”

“Yeah. They have those on me too. Stay the fuck out of them or I’ll break your fingers, and stay out of Clint’s, too.”

Bruce closed the laptop. “I wasn’t going to read that stuff. I just… you know, we didn’t know anything about people drinking being something that might get under his skin, and I wanted to make sure we didn’t accidentally do something else to mess him up.”

Natasha exhaled and uncrossed her arms. “I’m sorry. I just… it’s unnerving enough to know they have all that information about us without having to think about people reading it just out of morbid curiosity.”

“I’m pretty sure I don’t want to read their files on me,” Tony said. “I’m certain their assessments of my interpersonal skills aren’t very flattering.”

“They’re not,” she said, with a hint of a smile. “Trust me.”

“Clint seems to keep ending up in my hands somehow,” Tony said, and then glanced at Bruce. “Or our hands. And… we don’t want to fuck it up, that’s all. We didn’t get our genius badges for being good at dealing with people.”

“And… wait. JARVIS, did you tell her about the incident?” Bruce asked.

“What incident?”

“No, Dr. Banner. You did not ask me to file a report with the team members.”

“We had alarms go off earlier,” Tony said. “Sensors were detecting some kind of energy surge but couldn’t identify the source, but it seemed to be in the same place Clint was.”

Natasha frowned. “Were there cameras on him? Who was watching him?”

“He was in the bathroom. Thor was right outside the door. And yeah, the cameras were on… the one in the bathroom, too. JARVIS has orders to have cameras on him all the time.”

“What did the cameras see?”

“Nothing,” Tony said. “Clint standing in front of the mirror and staring, but nothing else. When Thor busted in on him, he seemed a little shaky, but he didn’t know what happened.”

“I looked at the camera footage,” Bruce said. “It looks like he’s talking to himself for part of it, but he seems confused… it looks like it could have been a minor partial seizure. You can see some odd behavior during a partial seizure and then confusion and memory loss afterwards.”

“So what were the sensors picking up?” Natasha asked.

“We don’t know. Possibly a glitch that had nothing to do with Clint.”

“I don’t like it,” Natasha said. “But he’s been sitting with us and eating and he seems fine. So either nothing really happened, or something happened and he doesn’t remember it, or something happened and he knows exactly what it was and doesn’t want us to know about it.”

“You don’t think if something had happened, he’d have told Thor…”

“After we activated the protocol on him?” Natasha said, shaking her head. “He’s not going to tell anybody anything. Whatever you all were up to earlier, don’t let it fool you. I know Clint, and right now he’s trapped, and we’re all the enemy, and he doesn’t trust any of us.”

“Then how the hell are we supposed to help him?” Tony asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m just hoping he realizes… that we’re his friends and we’re not giving up on him.”

“It sounds like he hasn’t had the greatest experiences with people he was supposed to be able to trust,” Tony said. “How are we supposed to convince him to start now?”

She shook her head. “If I was thinking like his handler, I’d have turned him over to my superiors already. But I can’t help thinking… that he deserves more than that. That he deserves for someone to stand by him when it really matters, even if no one ever did before.”

“Well, we’re not going anywhere,” Tony said firmly. “Well, except to go get some of that food before it’s gone. You hungry, Bruce?”

“Sure. Are you coming with us?” Bruce asked.

“Yeah. I’m going to keep an eye on Clint for a while,” Natasha said.

“If he’s lying about whether something happened, will you be able to tell?”

She hesitated for a moment.

“No.”

“Well, that makes it you and all the rest of us, I guess. If we’re flying blind, we might as well all be flying blind together.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I SWEAR I AM GOING TO WRITE MORE AND STOP BEING SO LAZY.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint proves he's still Hawkeye, at least when it comes to escape tactics. Loki proves he doesn't have to be physically present to cause all kinds of trouble. Fury is, surprisingly, unsurprised.

 

 

 

Natasha walked into the living room with Tony and Bruce on her heels to find Thor and Steve sprawled on the couch, both of them with their feet on the coffee table. Steve quickly took his down when he saw Natasha, looking slightly sheepish, but Thor just waved. Natasha glanced at the TV screen.

“Did you put _Ghostbusters_ on again?”

Thor grinned. “Perhaps. Isn’t it a rule that once a movie is started, you must obtain at least three votes to rule to turn it off?”

“But we’ve seen it, like, four thousand times.”

Tony shrugged. “Rules are rules.”

“Then vote to put something else on,” Natasha said.

“No way. This is one of the best movies ever,” Tony said.

“We’re going to get a sign made for the lab door that says, ‘Back off, man. I’m a scientist’,” Bruce added.

“I want to get one made for your door that says, ‘Yes, it’s true. This man has no dick’,” Natasha shot back.

Bruce shrugged. “You’ve seen it. Everybody’s seen it. The Other Guy shows up and the pants are gone. It’s pretty well-established fact at this point.”

Natasha attempted to suppress a smirk. “True. Where’s Clint?”

“In the kitchen getting more food,” Thor said.

Natasha gave him and Steve a stern look. “What part about someone supposed to be watching him all the time don’t you understand?”

“He just went to the kitchen…” Steve said apologetically. “We can see him from… wait. Well, we _could_ see him from here.”

Natasha spun toward the kitchen area, where the containers of food were still arrayed on the counter, but no sign of Clint.

“Damnit. JARVIS, where is Clint?”

“He has gone off all cameras.”

“What? How did he do that?”

Tony pointed to the stove. The metal grid above it that usually covered the air vent was hanging loose. “He’s in the ventilation system. JARVIS, can you track him with the motion sensors?”

“If he enters one of the areas equipped with motion sensors. The kitchen and living space are at the center of the building and any security breach would be detected…”

“Fuck,” Natasha muttered. “I leave two guys with superpowers to watch him and neither of you notice him climbing into the fucking ceiling?”

At this, both of them looked so ashamed of themselves that she relented.

“Okay, I forgive you. You’re not the first ones. That’s what I told you when we talked about this the first time… he might not have superpowers but he’s smart and he’s quick and he doesn’t miss much.”

“Chances are he’s just doing this to piss you off anyway,” Bruce pointed out.

Natasha sighed. “Yeah, he would do that.”

“Agent Barton has returned to camera range,” JARVIS said suddenly.

“Where?” Tony demanded.

“On the roof.”

“How the hell did he get to the roof that fast?”

“He’s Hawkeye,” Natasha said.

“He shouldn’t have been able to access the roof,” Tony said, frowning. “JARVIS, why did you give him access to the roof? He’s not supposed to have unsupervised access to any dangerous areas.”

“Well, you were with him, Mr. Stark.”

Tony blinked. “What?”

“The camera at the door visually identified you as well as Agent Barton and unlocked the door accordingly.”

“JARVIS, have rats been chewing on your wires? I’ve been right here. And before that, I was in the elevator. I haven’t been anywhere near the fucking roof.”

JARVIS sounded slightly offended. “I am simply answering your question, sir. The perimeter cameras, unless placed on higher levels of alert, will open doors provided a confirmed visual identification is made.”

“Even if the person it’s visually identifying is actually somewhere else?” Bruce asked.

“The cameras are not programmed to scan the entire system to determine whether the individual in question might be in more than one location simultaneously.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not usually a problem.”

Natasha turned toward the TV screen. “JARVIS, show us the camera footage.”

The movie flicked off, and the screen was filled with a camera image of the roof of the building, with the door in the center. After a moment, the door slid open, and two figures stepped out into the windy darkness. One of the was definitely Clint, and the other one was definitely Tony, but neither one spoke to or even glanced at the other, and after a moment, Tony simply vanished as if he’d never been there, leaving Clint standing alone under the dim lights.

“What the hell was that?” Tony asked.

“I think we have a serious problem,” Natasha murmured. “Thor… Loki couldn’t do that, could he? I mean, he’s locked up in Asgard, right?”

Thor frowned. “Loki is a trickster, Agent Romanov. He may be physically locked up in Asgard, but he thrives on interfering with the minds and hearts of others… and he still can, if given the opportunity.”

“There shouldn’t be any way he could take control of Clint again,” Natasha said.

“No. He was stripped of that ability. But, as I said, if given the opportunity…”

“You’re saying Clint could have let him in. Voluntarily. Why would he do that, after…”

“Don’t you remember what he said?” Tony interrupted. “You know part of him still wonders what Loki could have done with him if he’d understood what he was dealing with. Well, he understands what he’s dealing with now, and if that voice has been whispering in Clint’s ear and promising to be the one who can give him what nobody else can…”

Thor stood up, his face anxious. “That’s… Clint is a mortal. Loki can give him things that we won’t… not that we can’t. But we won’t.”

“Because Loki doesn’t care if it kills him,” Tony said.

“Yeah,” Natasha agreed quietly. “And at this point, neither does Clint.”

On the TV screen, Clint had been standing where the disappearing Tony had left him, looking up at the sky, but now he was walking slowly toward the edge of the roof.

“What’s he doing?” Tony asked.

“Oh, fuck,” Natasha murmured. “There’s no way anyone’s going to get up there fast enough to…”

They hadn’t even noticed Bruce move until the sliding glass doors that opened onto the balcony hissed, and the figure that ducked to clamber out into the night air, leaving shreds of clothes behind, moved so fast that no one had a chance to say anything before it had leaped upwards and disappeared from sight. Natasha spun and ran for the stairwell with Tony only a step behind her.

“Thor, get your hammer. You may have to do some flying…” she called over her shoulder.

“I fucking hope not,” Tony muttered, as they burst into the echoing stairwell.

Natasha leaped and grabbed the railing of the floor above, swinging herself up, then launched to the next one.

“Umm… I can’t do that,” Tony said.

“Then at least run a little faster.”

“If I had my suit…”

“Yeah, yeah. Hurry up.”

 

 

Clint heard the voice in the back of his head as he walked across the gravel-covered rooftop.

“What are you up to, Agent Barton? Considering taking some flying lessons?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you,” he muttered.

“On the contrary. It would deprive me of my only real form of entertainment.”

“Is that all I am?” Clint asked, noticing that his feet were still moving.

“That’s all you are to anyone, little Hawk,” Loki said. “A plaything. Like a little wind-up toy that shoots arrows. Why do you think you’re here, among superpowers and gods?”

“Why are you still here?”

“Because you want me to be.”

“I don’t want you anywhere near me,” Clint growled.

“Oh, but you do, or I wouldn’t be here. And you and I both know what you want. You want to know, don’t you? What I can do, that the others can’t? What I can do to you?”

He’d only made his escape from the kitchen because he knew it would infuriate Natasha and embarrass whoever was supposed to be watching him, and he’d only come up to the rooftop for the peace and the freedom he could only feel in his highest, most isolated perches. He was starting to wonder, though, if Loki had prodded him somehow to come up here, and he was starting to realize that he wasn’t alone, and that no amount of climbing or running or escaping would leave this lurking presence behind.

“I know everything you’re thinking, Agent Barton.”

Clint looked out over the city. “If I jumped right now, it would shut you up forever.”

“It would shut you up forever, too,” Loki pointed out.

“Like you said,” Clint murmured. “Nobody cares.”

He had time to take two or three more steps before his ears were full of a tremendous crash, and his field of view was entirely obstructed by a mass of green muscle, and then he was on his back with the Hulk looming over him, glaring down with those inscrutable dark eyes.

He tried to breathe, to think; the Hulk wouldn’t hurt him. Unless…

He felt his mouth open and heard words come out, but the voice was not his own, and he realized before he could stop them that all bets about the Hulk being willing to hurt him were off.

“Ahh. The great ugly brute has come to the rescue,” Loki’s voice said, mocking and amused. “I thought your only talent was causing damage.”

The Hulk’s eyes flashed and his face tightened into an expression of pure menace. “Loki.”

Clint tried to force out his own words, to tell the Hulk that he was still Clint, but it was too late for that; the massive hands had hauled him off the ground, and then the air was moving past him at an alarming speed, and then there was a crushing impact that sent him spinning into blackness before he even hit the gravel again.

The Hulk was lumbering toward his opponent with single-minded determination and the memory that this particular opponent tended to get back up after he was down. He was interrupted, though, by hands suddenly grabbing at his arms, a voice shouting at him. He resisted the impulse to knock the distraction off the roof; the voice was familiar, and he glanced down.

“Bruce! Stop!”

“Metal man,” he muttered, but he didn’t seem to have his metal on.

“Stop. You’re hurting Clint.”

“Loki,” he growled.

Tony shot a glance at Natasha, who was crouched over the limp figure sprawled at the base of one of the concrete cooling units.

“Natasha! He thinks that’s Loki! Get him to…”

“He’s out,” she called back. “Why does he think he’s Loki?”

“I don’t know!” Tony shouted, as he attempted to get the Hulk’s attention again. “Look, that’s _not Loki_. It’s Clint.”

“Loki. Know his voice.”

Oh, hell, Tony thought. So that was the game. And he wasn’t going to be able to explain any of it to the Hulk.

“You can’t hurt Loki without hurting Clint!” he insisted, punching the massive green arm.

The Hulk glanced down and frowned. “Why not?”

“Loki is using Clint to hide. Please. Stop. You’ll kill him. Damnit… Bruce… it’s Clint! Listen to me!”

Thor hit the rooftop with a thud, gripping his hammer but still barefoot and in jeans. The Hulk barely glanced at him; his eyes were fixed on Clint and Natasha.

“How bad is it, Nat?” Tony called.

“I don’t know. Looks like he hit with this shoulder. Dislocated or broken, or both. And he’s bleeding from his head but I can’t tell…”

The Hulk stepped back, looking confused.

“What happened?” Thor demanded, warily skirting the Hulk as he ran to join Natasha. “What… why would he hurt Clint?”

“Because he thought he was your brother,” Tony said, keeping a firm grip on the massive green arm to remind him he was there.

Thor lowered his head. “Loki’s work, no doubt. Nothing would please him more than to watch us harm each other. How badly is he hurt?”

“Too badly for us to deal with here,” Natasha said, refusing to let any emotion into her voice. “He needs a hospital…”

Thor reached out and briskly scooped both Clint and Natasha against his chest with one arm, starting the whirl of his hammer with the other.

“Hold on. And don’t let him fall.”

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

“You ever tried to get through evening downtown traffic, even in an ambulance?” Tony asked.

Natasha tightened her grip, one arm around Clint’s waist and the other around Thor’s neck. “He’s got a point. Let’s go.”

 

 

Natasha was dozing on Thor’s shoulder, with his hammer tucked out of sight under one of the chairs in the waiting room, when she was snapped into alertness by a voice she would know anywhere.

“Having a nice nap, Agent Romanov?”

She rubbed her eyes. “It’s three in the morning. It’s been sort of a long day.”

Fury nodded, then jerked his head in the direction of the exit. “Step outside. We need to have a talk.”

He didn’t turn around until he was out in the parking lot among the cars and away from curious ears, which was when he realized Natasha wasn’t alone.

“I didn’t ask to talk to you,” he said.

Thor shrugged. “You didn’t ask not to.”

Fury rolled his uncovered eye. “Fine. One of you want to tell me exactly what’s going on here?”

“The doctor said he’s got a badly dislocated shoulder… they put it back in place but he’ll have to wear his arm in a sling for a few weeks. And he’s got a lot of bruising, some broken ribs, and a concussion, but they said he was awake and talking, and they’ll let him go in a few hours if his head injury doesn’t look like it’s going to get any worse.”

Fury crossed his arms. “Yeah… and would you care to explain exactly _how_ Agent Barton ended up with a dislocated shoulder and broken ribs and a head injury?”

“Do I really even have to?” Natasha asked, shrugging. “Being Clint, as usual.”

“Please elaborate, Agent Romanov.”

“He was on the roof of the building testing some new arrows he’s been playing with, and one of them was a new grappling hook device.”

“And he felt the best way to test this was to jump off the roof of a building.”

“Umm… this _is_ Clint we’re talking about.”

Fury considered this for a moment. “You have a point, actually. Go on.”

“Anyway, he was supposed to end up on the balcony four floors down.”

“And?”

“He missed,” Thor said.

“There must have been more stretch in the line than he calculated for,” Natasha said. “He ended up swinging right into the wall.”

“Mmm-hmm. And this has what to do with reports that the Hulk was seen climbing around on the outside of the building?”

“Well, someone had to get him down,” Thor said.

Fury gave him a sharp look.

“Bruce heard my call go out over the building system. I was trying to get Tony into his suit and out there, but the Hulk is faster. He’s extremely protective of his teammates.”

“All his teammates?” Fury asked, glancing at Thor with a raised eyebrow.

“We haven’t had reason to test that one yet,” Natasha admitted.

“Let’s try not to have a reason to test that one,” Fury said. “So Agent Barton decides to test one of his self-designed arrows, even though Stark is supposed to be doing all the weapons development now, and he decides that the best way to test it is to jump off a building and assume it will work properly.”

“Yessir.”

Fury shook his head. “I hate to say it, but that actually sounds… pretty much perfectly normal, considering who we’re talking about. You’re his handler… you should have intervened, you know.”

“Well, I might have, except that I’d already told him he wasn’t allowed to test weapons on the roof, so he decided to disappear into the ventilation system and go do it anyway.”

“Which, again, sounds pretty much typical, all things considered,” Fury said. “I’ll want to talk to him when he’s had some time to recover.”

Natasha nodded, her head lowered. “I’m sorry I allowed this to happen. I didn’t…”

Fury waved his hand dismissively. “You think he didn’t do stupid things when Coulson was his handler? Actually, he did _more_ stupid things because he thought getting Coulson in trouble was funny. I’ll get Stark on the line and tell him to come up with some better safety devices for him to use when he’s testing things, even though he won’t use them. Keep me updated, Agent.”

“Yessir.”

He turned and walked briskly away among the cars, disappearing into the shadows. Natasha grabbed her phone.

“What are you doing?” Thor asked.

“Making sure Tony tells Fury the same story we just did,” she said, typing.

They turned back toward the hospital doors, and had barely taken a few steps before Natasha’s phone rang.

“What?”

“Is Fury still there?” Tony asked.

“Not that I know of, but that doesn’t mean he’s not lurking around listening somewhere. What do you want?”

“Look, you said Clint’s going to be okay, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Is he awake?”

“They said he was. We haven’t been allowed in to see him.”

“Umm… I sort of need you to get back and see him. With a phone. As soon as possible.”

“What the hell for?”

“Because…”

Natasha stopped. “Is this about Bruce?”

“He’s a mess. He knows he hurt Clint and that’s all he remembers and he’s driving himself nuts. Please just see if you can get Clint on the phone with him for ten seconds to tell him he’s okay. He’s not going to stop till he hears it from Clint and knows Clint’s still talking to him.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Thor sighed. “I’m sure it pleases my brother greatly to have been able to use two such close friends to harm each other.”

“Your brother’s a fucking psychopath,” Natasha muttered.

“At one point, I might have argued with you about that,” Thor said wearily. 

“He knew he could trick the Hulk into hurting Clint. And he knew what that would do to Bruce when he realized what he’d done.”

“I have no doubt.”

“What’s he going to do to try to turn the rest of us on each other?”

“I suspect his main interest is in turning the rest of us on Clint,” Thor said. “Dr. Banner’s distress is just an entertaining side effect for him. My brother is most amused by his toys when he can isolate them, convince them that even if they can’t trust him, they can’t trust anyone else either.”

“Great.”

“I didn’t say I intended to let him get away with it,” Thor said grimly. “I know Loki’s tricks well. He may play his game, but nothing says we have to agree to play along.”

 

 

 

 

 


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki's manipulations may actually have scared Clint into letting his friends try to figure out how to help him. Of course, it might just be the concussion talking.

“They’re not going to let us in,” Natasha said, fairly sure she was saying it for the twelfth time at least. “We’re not family or…”

“Did you tell them who the fuck you are?” Tony demanded on the other end of the phone.

“Do you want to come down here and wave some hundred-dollar bills around? Maybe that would… Tony, I have to go.”

“Wait! Why?”

“Bye, Tony.”

Clint had just come stumbling through the doors from the emergency room into the waiting room, his left arm cradled in a padded sling against his bare chest and a bandage on the side of his head. Two of the hospital staff were on his heels, trying to tell him something. Natasha caught up with him halfway across the room and grabbed him by his uninjured arm.

“Clint! Stop for a minute. What’s going on?”

“He’s leaving against medical advice,” one of the men said. “Doctor wanted him here under observation at least a few more hours.”

“Okay… why?”

“Well, his head seems to be okay… he’s got a concussion and needed some stitches, but the scans didn’t show any bleeding in his head. But they were trying to treat the dislocated shoulder and I don’t know what this guy does for a living, but I’ve never seen shoulder muscles like that in my life… they had to give him a _lot_ of medication to get him to relax enough to put it back in place. He’s going to be pretty doped up for a while.”

Clint looked at her, exhaustion written across his face. “Please, Nat…”

“We’ll take care of him,” she said.

“It’s still against medical advice. He could still have a bleed in his brain or a reaction to…”

“We’ll take care of him,” Thor repeated, and apparently there was something in his tone that made both men take a step backward and stop arguing.

“Okay… well, can you at least wait while we see if we can find a jacket or something that zips up the front so he doesn’t have to put his arm through a sleeve?”

“Yes, we’ll wait for that,” Natasha said, pulling Clint closer and hooking his right arm over her shoulder to steady him. “You okay, there?”

Clint shook his head.

“Yeah, I know,” she said, pressing her forehead to his. “Hang on for just a couple of minutes and we’ll go home.”

“No flying,” he murmured, his voice slurred.

“We’ll get a cab.”

“My shoes aren’t tied. I can’t tie them one-handed.”

“We’ll get them, Clint. It’s fine.”

She scowled as her phone started ringing yet again.

“Stop calling, Tony.”

“You hung up on me!”

“I was busy.”

“What’s going on?”

“I’ve got Clint with me. He’s checking himself out AMA. We have to wait for the doctor and then we’re going to get a cab and come home.”

“Put him on the phone,” Tony demanded.

“I don’t think he’s up for talking on the phone,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Umm… because I’m holding him up right now?”

Tony muttered something. “Fine. Just get home, all right?”

“No, we thought we’d hang out here for another five or six hours for fun.”

She hung up.

Eventually, one of the staff reappeared with a hooded sweatshirt and a handful of papers. Natasha half-listened to him as she draped the shirt over Clint’s shoulders and zipped up the front of it.

“Arm’s supposed to be kept in the sling for the next 24 hours but after that he should have it out of the sling for an hour or two a couple of times a day to keep it from getting too stiff. The doctor won’t write him up any prescription pain medications if he won’t stay for observation, so he’ll have to take something over-the-counter.”

Or whatever Tony had stashed in his medical supplies, Natasha thought to herself.

“Okay. What about the rest of it?”

“Not much to do for broken ribs except let them heal. They’ll be sore for a few weeks. He’s got six stitches in his head, and that needs to be cleaned and…”

“I know about all that,” she said, grabbing the papers from him and handing them to Thor. “Come on, Clint. We’re going home.”

“Wait… he has to sign…”

Thor stepped in front of the man, arms crossed. “The lady said we’re going home.”

“But…”

Thor raised an eyebrow and flexed his arms slightly.

“Fine,” the man said, retreating.

 

 

They steered Clint out under the bright, glaring hospital lights, the sky just starting to brighten overhead. At least at this early hour, traffic hadn’t had time to work itself up to the usual morning rush-hour frenzy, and the cab made good time. Apparently JARVIS already had instructions where to take them, because the elevator was moving as soon as the doors closed and before anyone gave directions.

Tony was waiting for them when the elevator stopped in the hall outside the living room. Being awake the entire night didn’t seem to have slowed him down in the slightest, but being awake all night wasn’t exactly out of the ordinary for Tony anyway. He seemed to have a million things to say to all three of them when the elevator doors opened, but he closed his mouth at the sight of Clint barely able to stay on his feet, holding onto Thor’s arm with the hand he’d managed to get through the jacket sleeve, trying to keep his eyes open.

“Well, fuck,” he managed eventually.

“Yeah,” Natasha said.

“You two could probably use some rest, huh.”

“Probably. You want to take him up to your room?”

“Yeah. That’s fine. Go get some sleep. You look ready to fall over yourself.”

Thor gently disengaged Clint’s grip on his arm, letting him latch onto Tony’s shoulder instead.

“Rough night?” Tony asked, as the elevator doors closed.

Clint nodded slightly.

“Look. Bruce is in my room… is that okay?”

Another nod.

“He doesn’t remember why the Other Guy attacked you.”

“He didn’t attack me,” Clint muttered, swaying on his feet.

“I watched him throw you…”

“He attacked Loki.”

“That’s what the Other Guy said. But why the hell would he think you were Loki?”

“What was he supposed to think? My mouth opened and Loki’s voice came out of it.”

“He came after you because you sounded like Loki?”

“No,” Clint said impatiently. “He came after Loki. It wasn’t me sounding like Loki. It was Loki talking to him and he knew it. He was baiting him to hurt me.”

“Clint… you want to tell me how Loki managed to do that?”

“No,” Clint said quietly.

Bruce had been sitting in the same chair in Tony’s room for a long time, but as soon as the door opened he was on his feet.

“What the hell… how bad did I hurt him?”

“I think it’s mostly a shitload of medication,” Tony said. “And a concussion and no sleep. He’s going to be okay.”

“Need some sleep,” Clint murmured.

Bruce stood helplessly. “Clint, I… the Other Guy…”

Clint glanced at Tony with dark, weary eyes. “Tell him what I told you. I’m too tired to say it again.”

“About Loki?”

“Yeah.”

Tony quickly repeated what Clint had said.

“Loki shouldn’t be able to do that,” Bruce said.

“He did. I was there,” Clint said, bitterness beneath the exhaustion.

“I’m still sorry, Clint. The last thing I would ever want…”

Clint let go of Tony and reached for Bruce, and for a moment Tony was afraid that he might punch him or do something else none of them were ready to deal with at the moment, but instead he hooked his uninjured arm around Bruce’s neck and pulled him in and kissed him, steady and firm and warm. When he released him, Bruce stared at him in bewilderment.

“Does that mean you’re…”

“I don’t think somebody kisses you like that unless you’re forgiven,” Tony said.

“I want to go to bed,” Clint said. “Please. I’m tired.”

The two of them pulled him to the bed and stripped him down to the sling and his shorts.

“We can let you sleep by yourself if you want,” Tony said.

Clint shook his head and made a vague gesture in their direction. Tony wasn’t going to ask him again; they stripped down and rolled into bed on either side of him and let him squirm and settle in. He was asleep in moments, lying on his uninjured side with his face pressed into Bruce’s shoulder, and Tony tucked securely behind him, his hand stroking carefully through the short, dark blond hair.

“Loki shouldn’t have been able to do that,” Bruce said.

“I know,” Tony murmured. “But he did.”

“Is he trying to get Clint killed?”

“He’s nuts. And he’s bored. He’s having fun.”

“How do we get him the fuck away from Clint?”

“Well, first of all, we figure out why it is that he can get to Clint in the first place. Maybe once we deal with that…”

“I think that might have more to do with Clint than it does with Loki,” Bruce said.

“Yeah… I think so too. But maybe if we…”

“Tony?”

“Yeah?”

“Some of us do actually need to sleep a little bit sometimes.”

“Oh. Right.”

 

 

 

Tony wasn’t going to be sleeping any time soon; he was much too wide awake for that. He waited until Bruce’s breathing evened out and he was sure both he and Clint were asleep before he squirmed out from under the blankets and headed for the lab.

 

 

From the light filtering through the curtains, it had to be sometime late in the morning when Clint was half-awakened by the door opening, and then fully awakened by Natasha tapping him on the back.

“Oof. What?”

Bruce propped himself up on his elbow, looking at Natasha with sleepy puzzlement over Clint’s shoulder.

“Oh. Hi.”

“Sit up,” she ordered.

Clint winced, his ribs sending stabbing pain up and down his side as he gingerly worked himself upright. His shoulder throbbed and his head didn’t feel much better, and his stomach twisted. Natasha looked over the gash on his head, then took his chin in her hand and studied his face intently.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking at your eyes.”

“Why?”

“Because if your pupils were unevenly dilated, that would be a sign that you were bleeding into your brain.”

“Oh. So they’re not?”

“Nope. How do you feel?”

“Bad.”

She smiled ruefully. “Sorry. How about something to eat and some pain pills?”

“How about just some pain pills?”

“You’re going to end up making yourself sick if you take them without eating. Could you at least eat some soup?”

Clint muttered something that might have been a grudging agreement, since he didn’t really have much of a choice. Natasha patted his good shoulder approvingly.

“All right. I’ll be back in a few. Where’d Tony go?”

“Probably to his lab,” Bruce said. “He’s got A Project now. He won’t sleep for a week unless we drag him up here and sedate him.”

“What project?”

Bruce glanced at Clint before answering.

“Loki could get in here and do this… in Tony’s building, under Tony’s watch. And that’s not acceptable. So he’s not going to give himself or anyone else a break until he figures out how to make it not happen again.”

“It’s not Tony’s fault,” Clint said.

“Like I said. His building, his watch. Loki got in, got to you, managed to take advantage of a situation and try to get you killed…”

“He doesn’t want me dead,” Clint said. “I’m no fun if I’m dead.”

“Clint, he was trying to make you walk off a roof,” Natasha argued.

Clint shook his head. “That wasn’t him.”

He felt Bruce go suddenly wide awake and silent beside him, and he saw Natasha’s face change.

“That wasn’t him?”

“No.”

“Who was it, Clint?”

“That was me.”

She looked at him intently. “Why were you going to walk off a roof, Clint?”

“I was just thinking about it.”

“Tell me _why_.”

He dropped his eyes. “Because that’s the easiest way to get rid of Loki, isn’t it? Make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone else? If I’m not worth anything except as a toy for him to play with and a tool to make you hurt each other…”

“Clint…”

“You saw what he can use me to do,” he said, looking up at her. “You were there. People ended up dead. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Friends. Ended up dead.”

“That’s not going to happen again,” Bruce said firmly. “He can’t control you like that again.”

“And you can’t blame yourself for what happened,” Natasha said. “If I’d been the one assigned to watch the cube, it would have been me that he took, not you. It would have been whoever was there. You didn’t ask for him to take over your head and you didn’t volunteer to be used by someone… someone with powers we have no way to know what to do with.”

Clint sat in silence, refusing to respond.

“Clint?” Bruce asked. “Do you know why JARVIS opened the roof door for you last night?”

Clint frowned. “I… he wasn’t supposed to, was he. No, I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because of my head… I just remember walking up to the door and it opened.”

“It opened because the video camera didn’t just see you,” Bruce said. “It saw you and Tony. It opened the door for Tony.”

“Tony wasn’t with me,” Clint said. Then his face paled and his stomach twisted again. “You mean Loki tricked the camera into opening the door.”

Natasha laid a hand on his head. “Clint, listen to me. I know you’re not happy about the protocol and about having us watch you and all that, but I have to…”

“I need it,” Clint murmured, almost inaudible.

Natasha frowned. “Clint?”

“I need it. I don’t know… bad things happened to people. Because of me. I don’t know how to stop this… I need help, Nat.”

She rubbed her hand through his hair gently, but the look in her eyes was so pained that Bruce had to look away.

“Shh. You have help. You have us.”

“He’s just going to use me to hurt you.”

“We’re not going to let that happen,” she said. “We’re going to stop this. I promise you.”

He sat unmoving under her hand.

“Bruce, talk to me for a minute,” she said, nodding toward the hall.

The door closed behind them.

“I’m going to stay with him,” she said. “Go down to the lab and see what Tony’s up to and see if you can help him. We’ve got to figure out some way to keep Loki away from him. He’s not strong enough to keep him out on his own… not right now.”

“Are you…”

“You know how long I’ve known Clint?” she asked. “You know how many times I’ve heard him ask for help? None. Not once. I’ve found him after a battle with gunshot wounds that he didn’t bother to mention to anyone. Clint doesn’t ask for help. If it’s that bad…”

Bruce nodded. “I’m sure Tony can figure something out. I’ll go pick up Thor on the way and see what he knows about it… maybe he can help, as long as he doesn’t actually touch anything. And… you know, Clint might not be as willing to accept help once he’s not under the influence of sleep deprivation, a bunch of drugs, and a concussion, right?”

“That’s definitely possible. But we’re going to help him anyway.”

 

 

 


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint doesn't need Loki to fuck up all of his relationships with other people. He does that just fine on his own.

 

 

 

It was dark outside when Natasha woke him again with a sandwich and a handful of assorted pills.

“I hope at least one of those is something to make my head stop hurting,” he muttered.

“It is. Come sit at the table… you shouldn’t eat sandwiches in bed, especially someone else’s bed… and I need to clean that cut on your head and put a new bandage on it.”

“You’re going to use that stuff that stings like hell, aren’t you,” he said, gingerly working his way to his feet.

“You big baby. You don’t think it’s a big deal when you get your head smashed open but you whine about the antiseptic to clean it?”

“Yup.”

He slid into the chair and raised his hand to his head to feel the stitches.

“Fuck! Did they have to shave such a big chunk of hair off?”

Natasha rolled her eyes. “You were unconscious. They didn’t know if you had a skull fracture or what. They probably weren’t extremely concerned about preserving your hairstyle.”

“Yeah, but now I’ve got a big bald spot.”

“Oh, it’ll grow back,” she said.

Clint winced as she worked. “Oww. Could you be a little rougher?”

“I thought you liked when people hurt you.”

Clint glanced over his shoulder. “If I thought this was foreplay, I might like it.”

“Don’t be an ass.”

She secured a new bandage and stepped back.

“You done?”

“Yeah. Take your pills and eat your sandwich. I’ll get you a bottle of water.”

She sat down across from him at the table as he ate, watching him. After the sandwich was gone, she pulled out a small glass vial with a plastic cap, containing some sort of cloudy liquid.

“What the hell is that?”

“Something Tony and Bruce came up with in the lab, since they’re not apparently doing very well with trying to figure out any way to block Loki right now.”

“Umm… you didn’t answer my question.”

She grinned. “Well, since I’m handling it without gloves, I’m assuming it’s not corrosive or radioactive… it’s pretty much a cocktail of stuff Tony had in his magical medicine cabinet and that the two of them wanted to test.”

“What’s it supposed to do to me?” he asked warily. “I don’t like being drugged, you know. The pain meds will slow me down already.”

She shook her head. “Yeah… but we sort of need to slow you down a little bit, Clint. I mean, you are Hawkeye, after all. And you disappeared out of the kitchen in full view of Thor _and_ Steve, and that’s the kind of thing you’re pretty much capable of doing all the time.”

“So you’re going to drug me stupid so I can’t?” he asked, irritated.

“No. I wouldn’t do that to you, and I wouldn’t let them do it to you.”

“So what is that shit and what’s it supposed to do to me?”

“I talked to Bruce and Tony… and one of the things we’re all worried about, and you’re not allowed to get pissy about this because you know we have a reason to be worried about it, is that if Loki starts messing with things in your head again, you’ll close up and you won’t tell anyone about it, and we won’t know we need to look out.”

“So…”

“So, Tony thinks this stuff will have a disinhibiting effect on you… it will make it harder for you to keep secrets and that means it will make it easier for us to tell if Loki’s messing with you and you’re trying to hide it.”

“I don’t want something that’s…”

“It’s not going to make you do or say anything you wouldn’t have otherwise. Although considering what kind of stuff is probably in here, it might make you feel a little… altered. But it shouldn’t be too bad. I told Tony you weren’t going to willingly take anything that was going to drug you stupid or make you say things you didn’t want to say.”

Clint raised an eyebrow and looked at the vial like it was full of cyanide. “I don’t want it.”

She lowered her head and sighed. “Clint… look. I’m really tired. I tried to sleep earlier after we came back from the hospital… but I was too worried about you. And I’ve been here since this morning, and I really, really need to get some rest, and I really don’t trust anyone else on the team _not_ to underestimate what you’re capable of, and…”

“And you won’t feel right leaving me with anyone else unless you know you’ve at least done something to make sure I’m not going to end up walking off a roof before anybody figures out what I’m up to.”

“Yeah. Pretty much.”

He sighed and took the vial. “If this does anything horrible to me, I’m blaming Tony.”

He drank it, wincing at the extremely bitter taste, and grabbed his bottle of water to chase it down.

“Ugh. That’s foul.”

“I’ll tell them to make it strawberry-flavored next time.”

“Go away and go to sleep,” he said.

“Gotta find you a babysitter first,” she said. “JARVIS? Are Tony and Bruce still in the lab?”

“Yes, although they do not seem pleased with their progress.”

“Okay. Where is Captain Rogers?”

“Exercising. Would you like me to contact him?”

“No,” Clint said.

Natasha rolled her eyes. “How about Thor?”

“Watching a movie. Would you like me to contact him?”

Clint shrugged. “That’ll work.”

Apparently Thor had no issue with abandoning his movie, because he was at the door only a few minutes later, grinning broadly to see Clint sitting up at the table.

“Hello, little Hawk!”

Clint looked over at him, and realized that he was beginning to notice a slight fuzziness creeping in around the edges of his thinking, and a feeling of lazy contentment that he really couldn’t say was anything but pleasant.

“You have some fine battle wounds,” Thor said, studying the mottled bruising that had bloomed in the last 24 hours across the entire left side of his torso, his arm, and across half his face and head.

“Yeah. Guess that happens when you set the Hulk off. I’ll try not to do it again unless I’m wearing a lot more padding.”

Natasha shook her head and turned to Thor. “I need some sleep. Are you okay with staying with him for a while?”

“Certainly. Do I need to do anything?”

“Nope. He’s allowed to have more pain medication in six hours, but JARVIS is keeping track of that, and the antibiotics and stuff are another twelve hours. I just fixed up his head, and… oh, I almost forgot. One of the doctors from over at S.H.I.E.L.D. called and said they don’t want you wearing a sling. Which, I notice, you’re not wearing anyway… but they said they can’t risk you losing any range of motion in your shoulder by having it immobilized.”

“See? I knew that. That’s why I’m not wearing it.”

“No, you’re not wearing it because you’re a pain in the ass who likes being difficult.”

“If I really wanted to be difficult, I’d put the sling back on just to piss you off.”

Natasha shook her head. “You know what? I do need some rest. Be a good boy and listen to Thor so he doesn’t have to give you another head injury, okay?”

“I’ll think about it.”

Thor frowned. “He seems slightly… dazed.”

“I was going to mention that,” she said. “Some of it’s the pain medication, and some of it’s something Tony and Bruce gave him. It’s supposed to make it harder for him to shut down and hide it if Loki starts poking around in there again… but they did say it might make him slightly out of it. Are you all right with that?”

“Of course.”

She patted him on the shoulder. “Thank you. And please… keep an eye on him, okay? No matter what they gave him, he’s still capable of things you probably wouldn’t expect.”

“I swear that I will watch him with all diligence and attention,” Thor said solemnly.

Natasha smiled. “Good. Then I can go to sleep.”

Thor stood for a few minutes, watching Clint stare at the ceiling.

“Would a bit of time in the hot tub be beneficial?” he asked. “I’d expect you’re quite sore, even if you’re not feeling it right now.”

“That sounds pretty good, actually.”

 “You should probably put pants on, though.”

Clint glanced down at his underwear. “Does anyone in this building even fucking care if anyone’s wearing pants anymore?”

“I doubt it, but I’ve been told it’s expected.”

 

 

 

 

The heat of the water soaked slowly into stiff joints and bruised muscles, and Clint sighed and leaned back against one of the water jets, resisting the temptation to close his eyes. Admittedly, it was worth keeping them open to watch Thor, who was quite contentedly naked and sprawled out in the water with a lazy grin.

“I was pleased to see you awake,” he said. “Humans are disturbingly fragile… I was worried you were worse harmed than you apparently are.”

“I’m tougher than you’d think,” Clint said, yawning. “I’ve got the scars to prove it, too.”

“I know. I’ve looked at them. It’s a bit distressing to think of you being hurt badly enough to leave such scars.”

Clint shrugged, and then reminded himself not to shrug anymore until his shoulder stopped hurting. “Most of them are old.”

“How old are they, little Hawk?”

Ordinarily, Clint wouldn’t have answered that question, but his brain wasn’t quite working at its usual speed, and before he could think of a rude or dismissive answer, his mouth was already moving.

“Circus work is pretty rough. Especially when you’re training with swords and knives and stuff. And especially when the people who are training you will beat the hell out of you when you mess something up. Gives you a good reason to get really good, really fast, I guess. That one on my shoulder is from the last time I saw either of them… when he shot me. The rest… are just work stuff. The usual.”

He realized Thor was studying him closely, cataloging the patchwork of scars across his skin, but the intense scrutiny was starting to stir interest in parts of his body that Thor wasn’t paying any particular attention to at the moment. Of course, his attention was drawn to that area rather abruptly, and he grinned.

“Are you enjoying me looking at you?” he asked.

Clint chuckled. “Apparently part of me’s enjoying it.”

He pushed himself away from the edge of the hot tub, and Thor reached over and gently pulled him closer, pressing his face against his uninjured shoulder and biting at the warm skin. Clint exhaled and settled himself on his knees, his cock hardening even more as it pressed against Thor’s stomach.

“Are you sure you’re well enough for…”

“Fuck. Of course I am. It takes more than a crack on the head and some bruises to put me out of commission.”

Thor laughed and kissed him, and Clint ignored the small jab of pain in his ribs that made it past the haze of painkillers as he raised his arms to hook them around Thor’s neck and pull their bodies closer.

It took him a moment to realize that Thor had turned his head away and lowered his eyes, that his hands were pushing Clint back instead of pulling him in.

“What?” he asked.

Thor shook his head. “Nothing, little Hawk.”

“Bullshit. Are you worried about hurting me?”

“No…”

“Why won’t you even look at me?” Clint demanded, puzzled and somewhat alarmed. “What did I do?”

“You didn’t do anything,” Thor muttered, sliding away from him.

“What the hell… then what’s wrong with you? Or what’s wrong with me?”

Thor glanced at him and looked away. “I can’t…”

“Can’t what?”

Thor sighed. “Natasha told us that Loki had provoked the Hulk by speaking through you in his own voice…”

“Yeah. He did,” Clint said slowly, wishing that his brain was putting things together a little faster. “And… you’re afraid he’s going to try to fuck with you next, aren’t you?”

“Am I not the next easy target?” Thor asked. “He knows I am fond of you and he knows how angry I am for what he did, to you and others…”

“Yeah, but the Hulk is different. Loki couldn’t just bait you into hurting me just by… that’s not what you’re afraid of, is it.”

Thor shook his head.

“You’re afraid that you’re going to be fucking me and open your eyes and realize it’s not me anymore,” Clint said. “That it’s him instead.”

“Loki knows how to hurt others,” Thor said quietly. “And knowing the things you know means that he knows how to hurt each of us, not just with his usual methods, but where we are all most vulnerable.”

“But I’d have to let him do that, wouldn’t I?” Clint asked, and then wished again that his mouth would stop talking, because he really, really didn’t like what it had just said.

Thor finally looked up at met his gaze evenly. “Yes. You would have to let him. But…”

“But I might let him, right? That’s what everyone’s thinking.”

“You already did, little Hawk. He would not have been able to use you to trigger the Hulk if you hadn’t allowed it.”

“Like I wanted to…”

“Some part of you must have wanted to. Some part of you wants whatever he’s promising to give you, or you just want to let him destroy you. I don’t know and I don’t understand… but I can’t…”

Clint scrambled out of the water and grabbed a towel, making a half-hearted attempt to dry himself off before grabbing for his jeans.

“Where are you going?” Thor asked. “Wait… you’re not supposed to be alone…”

“Fuck that.”

“Little Hawk…”

“Shut up.”

Thor was out of the water and reaching for him, but Clint ducked out of his grasp and bolted for the door. Of course, it was locked.

“JARVIS, open the fucking door.”

“You know I’m not permitted to do that, Agent Barton.”

“Fuck you, JARVIS.”

Thor sighed and grabbed a towel. “Now, if you’ll just let me get dressed, I’ll take you wherever you want to go, as long as there’s someone there to watch you.”

Clint leaned against the wall, arms crossed, head spinning with confusion and anger and other things he didn’t want.

“Natasha’s asleep, and I don’t want anyone waking her up. And I don’t want to hang out with Captain Tight-Pants…”

“You might find that Steve is a very good listener,” Thor said, “and he is…”

“I don’t give a fuck what he is. Bruce and Tony are up in the lab. Take me there.”

Thor sighed. “JARVIS, please alert the scientists that we will be paying them a visit shortly. And warn them that our friend’s disposition is…”

“Don’t even fucking say anything.”

Thor gave him a sharp look. “I do not deserve your anger.”

And he didn’t, really, but Clint didn’t care, not at the moment. Thor had said what the others wouldn’t say, what he didn’t want to think about, and the only way he was going to stop thinking about it was to get away from him.

“I just want to leave,” Clint muttered. “Just get me out of here.”

“I see,” Thor said quietly, sadly. “Loki doesn’t even need to show himself to build a wall between you and those who love you. He’s clever enough to know you will do it yourself. And once he has cut you off from everyone who could save you, he will be able to use you as he pleases.”

Clint closed his eyes and blamed the stupid fucking drug Tony and Bruce had given him for the hot tears that burned under his eyelids. He jumped when a hand brushed his face.

“I hope when you’ve had some time to think, you’ll forgive me,” Thor said. “Come with me… I’ll take you to the lab now.”

The pain and misery written clearly across the usually smiling face was so clear that it felt like being slapped. Clint lowered his head, knowing that he owned his friend an apology, but knowing just as well that with the anger and frustration chasing themselves in circles in his head, no attempt at making things right was going to turn out well at the moment.

“Fine. Just… let’s go.”

 

 

 

 


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce and Tony aren't going to tolerate anyone meddling with their friend. Bruce has done some research and has some ideas.

 

 

 

JARVIS was obviously waiting for them, as the lab doors slid quietly open as Thor and Clint approached, letting out a breath of cool air; with all of the computers and machinery, the lab had to be kept a few degrees colder than the rest of the building. Tony and Bruce were hunched over one of the lab benches, notes and sketches glowing on display screens above them, but as soon as the door opened, Tony looked up and snapped his fingers, and the displays vanished.

Clint realized that Thor had disappeared before he could say anything; for such a large man he could vanish surprisingly quickly. He muttered a curse at himself for letting him go off with his feelings hurt, despite his attempts to remind himself that Thor was an Asgardian deity, not a disappointed teenager.

“You all right, Clint?” Tony asked. “Come on… sit down somewhere.”

Clint glanced at Bruce, and it took him a minute to realize that the stunned expression on the other man’s face was the result of his appearance, with his deep, ugly bruises on full display since he hadn’t managed to put on any clothes besides a pair of jeans.

“Shit,” Bruce murmured, and Tony grabbed him by the arm and shook him.

“Hey… the Other Guy did that. Not you. Clint knows that. Right, Clint?”

Bruce’s horrified face was almost as bad as Thor’s hurt one. Clint looked away.

“The Other Guy didn’t do this. I did it. Everybody knows whose fault this is.”

“Umm… Asgardian Prison Inmate Number 49273?” Tony said.

Clint turned around and pressed his forehead against the wall, wondering if he’d have been better off staying with Thor, or even going and hanging out with Steve. A hand brushed his shoulder.

“Clint?”

He didn’t really want to turn around, but he did anyway. His head was starting to hurt again, and things were starting to go blurry, and he should have put a shirt on before coming into the lab, because he was shivering. He tried to focus on Tony, but the look on his face was odd.

“Bruce,” Tony said. “Come here.”

Bruce approached them hesitantly, not quite sure why Clint would want him anywhere in the same building considering what he’d done, but as he got closer, he realized that Tony had a hand on Clint’s chest, steadying him, and that Tony was studying his face intently.

“You’re cold, Clint,” Tony said.

“It’s cold in here…”

“Bruce, look at his eyes.”

Before Clint could look away, Bruce caught a glimpse of his eyes; instead of their usual gray they had turned ice-blue. Clint shifted, but what seemed like an instinct to run was overridden, and he found himself paralyzed, frozen in place.

“Nope. Not happening,” Tony said sharply. “Fuck off, Loki.”

“That’s hardly an appropriate way to address a god,” Loki’s voice retorted.

“Sorry excuse for a god,” Tony said. “Why don’t you come destroy some stuff or something instead of playing around in people’s heads? Oh, right. Because you’re locked up in a hole somewhere and playing around in people’s heads is the only thing you can do.”

“I think you’ll find that I’m capable of destroying all sorts of things. Especially with the cooperation of my Hawk.”

Tony’s jaw clenched, and for a moment Bruce could see how tempted he was to slam his fist into the face that was mocking him with a grin. Then Tony lowered his hand.

“He’s not your Hawk. He’s _our_ Hawk.”

“Oh, of course. Because you’re all so fond of him. Because you love him, is that it? You can tell him that as many times as you wish… he won’t believe you. At least with me, he knows to expect lies…”

Tony’s hand shot out and clamped over the grinning mouth, hard enough to shove Clint back against the wall, and his fingers tightened.

“I’m not listening to you anymore. Clint’s not going to listen to you anymore. Right, Clint?”

The slap of Tony’s hand on his face had snapped some consciousness back into him, but he still felt like he was swimming against a strong current as he tried to make it back to the surface.

“Tell him to fuck off,” Tony said. “Tell him you trust us. You have to trust us, Clint. We promised we were going to help you… and I never promise anybody anything, so that ought to mean _something_ …”

Tony’s hand over his mouth didn’t silence Loki’s voice in Clint’s head.

“They expect you to trust them? These two social incompetents? They don’t care about you. You’re an experiment. You don’t believe me? See how you feel when they decide their little infatuation has worn off and that you’re more trouble than you’re worth, little Hawk. You’ve always been more trouble than you were worth… do you think Stark will still want to play with you if you hurt his precious science friend again? Because you will… and you want to, don’t you? These two, who think they’re so much better than you, even though neither of them has ever faced combat as you have, with nothing but the weapon in your hands and the clothes on your back…”

He realized the voice was pulling him back down, even as he tried to focus on what it was saying. He realized he could taste the bitterness of the words on his own tongue, and felt a sharp flash of anger cut through the haze.

“Neither have you.”

Loki paused. “I haven’t…”

“You think you know what it’s like? You don’t. Try being fucking human. Try knowing you only get one shot at this. Try knowing you only get to live in your own head. You don’t know.”

Tony’s hand was still tight over Clint’s mouth, wary of the damage Loki’s words could do, but he was watching intently, and his other hand was still pressed to Clint’s chest. He watched the ice-blue coldness flicker and dim to warmer gray in his eyes, and he let go of his mouth and replaced his hand with his lips.

Clint staggered back to full awareness with his hands already coming up to grab Tony’s arms and pull him closer, with their mouths already locked together. Tony pulled back enough to look him in the eyes, and he grinned.

“Hey there, Clint.”

Over Tony’s shoulder, he saw Bruce’s shoulders slump with relief.

“You okay?” Tony asked.

“I don’t know,” Clint murmured.

“You’re still cold. Bruce… your room’s not busy right now, is it?”

“No…”

“Okay, good. Then get over here and give me a hand with him… he’s not very steady on his feet at the moment.”

“Are you sure I…” Bruce started to say.

“Don’t,” Tony said, giving him a sharp look. “Not now. Just come on.”

Bruce nodded slowly and slid a hand behind Clint’s back, careful not to touch the bruises.

“Okay. You okay with this, Clint?”

Clint wasn’t even completely sure what they were talking about, but if it meant they were both going to stay with him and not leave him cold and alone with the voice in his head it was okay, so he nodded.

“Good. JARVIS, turn the temperature in Bruce’s room up a few degrees and get the elevator down here for us.”

 

 

 

 

“Do you know what we’re doing with him?” Bruce asked, as they propped Clint up in the corner of the elevator.

“Of course not,” Tony said. “Do you?”

“How would I know?”

“You’re the doctor.”

Bruce scowled. “Don’t be a jackass. I’m a doctor of nuclear physics. That doesn’t really apply at the moment.”

Both of them jumped when Clint chuckled slightly.

“What’s so funny?” Tony asked, and Bruce saw the wariness slip across his face as he waited to see whether it was Clint or Loki laughing at them.

“You telling Tony not to be a jackass,” Clint murmured, and when his eyes opened, they were Clint’s eyes. “That’s like telling Steve not to be such a Boy Scout.”

“I prefer ‘arrogant son of a bitch’ or ‘socially incompetent prick’ to ‘jackass’, personally,” Tony said. “But I’ve been called worse things.”

“Somehow, I don’t doubt that,” Bruce said.

They were out into the hall and on their way into Bruce’s room now, and the air that slipped around them when the door opened was warm against Clint’s chilled skin, but not as warm as Tony’s hand around his arm or Bruce’s palm against his back.

“All right,” Tony said. “You tell us what you need. If you just need to sleep for a while, that’s fine. Just…”

Clint shook his head. “Had enough sleep.”

“What do you need?”

“I don’t know.”

Bruce looked at Tony before he spoke. “You need somebody else to decide what you need for a little while, don’t you?”

Clint nodded slowly. Bruce nodded toward the bed.

“Lay down. I need to talk to Tony for a minute. Everything’s fine. Okay?”

Clint obediently stumbled to the bed and flopped down, grabbing a pillow to pull over his head. Bruce grabbed Tony by the arm and pulled him in close, keeping his voice low.

“How much do you know about the whole dominance and submission thing?”

“Umm… handcuffs, whips, lots of leather… that kind of thing?”

Bruce shook his head. “Tony, Tony. I would think you’d be an expert on this kind of thing. First of all, not everyone who does dominant and submissive stuff is into handcuffs or leather or inflicting pain or any of that. Submission is a psychological…”

“Is this what Natasha took you to that store for? Because if she thinks I want to play submissive, she’s definitely reading me wrong…”

“Tony, stop being a dick and listen, please. Just because you obviously don’t want to talk about…”

“Really? What was your first clue?”

“Damnit…” Bruce muttered, rubbing his forehead. “I’m not fucking talking about you. I’m talking about Clint. And yeah, the lady at the store sent us home with a bunch of books along with the other stuff, and yeah, I read some of them.”

“Why?”

“Research.”

“Always the scientist,” Tony said. “What are you getting at, here?”

“You ever heard of sub-space?”

“I’m not a complete novice in this whole sex thing.”

“Okay, so you know what it is?”

Tony shrugged. “Sort of an adrenaline rush thing, I guess?”

“It’s a state that subs go into. Some of it’s the adrenaline and the response to the physical stuff, but some of it’s a psychological response to being…”

“Right. So, Clint.”

“So… shit. This is like explaining this to a two-year-old and you’re making it difficult on purpose because it freaks you out. A dom-sub relationship is supposed to be based on trust… the sub can let themselves go into that other state of mind, give up their control, because they trust the person they’re with.”

“Except Clint doesn’t trust anyone.”

“No. But I think he figured out somewhere along the line that he could get to sort of the same place if someone put him down hard enough, hurt him enough to trigger that physical and psychological response… he’s a control freak who needs his control taken away, and there’s never been anyone he could trust to do it safely or decently, so he finds people who will do it against his will.”

“Like, for example, Loki.”

“Yeah. Like that.”

“So what the hell are we doing?”

“We’re going to take away his control for a little while… but he’s hurt and he’s a mess, so we’re going to be gentle with him… and we’re going to see if he can trust us enough to actually go down without the fight for once.”

“You know how to do that?”

“Not really,” Bruce said, shrugging. “But I think we need to give it a shot.”

“Sure, what’s the worst that could happen?” Tony said. “I mean, besides making him more fucked up than he already is and making him trust us less than he already does?”

“You got a better plan?”

“No,” Tony said. “Actually, I think it’s a pretty good plan, all things considered. But if I bitch about it and act like I think it’s incredibly stupid, it’s not my fault when it goes wrong.”

“So you’re going so put this on me?” Bruce asked, rolling his eyes.

“You’re the one who did the research.”

“You really are a dick when you want to be.”


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Playing with someone like Clint could be dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. Fortunately, playing with dangerous things they don't know what they're doing with is sort of Bruce and Tony's specialty.

 

Clint listened absently to the low voices across the room, not really caring what they were saying. He was fairly sure he didn’t want to know, and it was much easier to lay there with a pillow over his head and wait.

It seemed like a long time before the bed shifted on either side of him, and two pairs of hands were gently pulling the pillow away and rolling him over and tugging at his jeans. The deep, icy chill hadn’t faded despite the warmth of the room, and the hands were very warm, and so was the rest of the bare skin that was brushing over his own. Tony said something about him being freezing, and there were blankets being pulled up over him and two warm bodies pressing against him, arms and hands draped over him, rubbing and stroking him.

“Hey, there,” Bruce said. “You still with us?”

Clint nodded, and then someone was kissing him, and someone’s hands were sliding over his abdomen, tracing the tight lines of muscles, and fingers were working through the wiry hair and stroking around the base of his cock. He moaned against the lips that were pressed against his own and thrust his hips up against the delicate touch.

“Relax,” Tony said. “We’re running the show, not you.”

“That so?” Clint asked.

“Yup.”

“What are you going to do with me?”

“Whatever we want,” Bruce said. “But we’re not going to hurt you.”

Clint opened his eyes and looked over at him. “If you’re not going to hurt me, there’s no point in playing this game.”

“I think there is,” Bruce said.

Clint shrugged. “Do whatever you want.”

“Oh, we will,” Tony promised.

Doing whatever they wanted took a moment of discussion, as they hadn’t really planned that part out exactly, but it ended up with Bruce pulling Clint against his chest and wrapping his arms around him, grasping his wrists. Clint squirmed a bit, just enough to establish that he would have no problem getting loose if he wanted to, but Bruce just smiled and worked on sucking a deep mark into Clint’s uninjured shoulder. Clint muttered something and let his head fall back against Bruce’s chest, exposing his throat to similar attention.

Tony waited until Clint was properly distracted before he leaned in and caught his open mouth in a determined kiss. Clint’s muscles tightened for a moment, startled, but then he relaxed into the kiss and into Bruce’s grip.

“So… what do you have in here to play with?” Tony asked. “I know you went shopping.”

“Second dresser drawer. Under the shirts,” Bruce said.

Clint glanced up at him. “What kind of…”

“The other shirts,” Bruce interrupted him.

“Why do you have this many shirts when you only wear, like, three of them?”

“Tony?”

“Yeah?”

“Focus, please.”

“Oh. Right. Here you go.”

He pulled out a strip of soft black cloth.

“Is this a blindfold?”

“Yeah.”

“And you thought you were going to put this on me?”

Bruce smiled and lowered his head to whisper in Clint’s ear.

“I think Tony freaks out about anything related to submission because he’s too busy being Iron Man to admit that he wants it. Maybe we’ll have to test that theory some time.”

Clint chuckled, and Tony glared at them. “Are you talking about me?”

“Yes. Give me the blindfold.”

Clint tipped his head back to look up at him. “You put it on, and I’ll take it off.”

“You won’t,” Bruce said, his voice light and easy but with steel underneath it.

“Or what?”

Bruce tied the blindfold over his eyes, then returned his hands to their grip on Clint’s wrists. Despite his protest, Clint’s hands shifted in Bruce’s grasp, but made no attempt to pull free.

“What’s Tony doing now?” he asked, and there was a hint of anxiety in it.

“Wasting time and being an idiot,” Bruce said. “Tony, will you please pay attention?”

“Did Natasha really make you get all this stuff to use on me? Because if she did…”

Clint was slightly surprised by the hard edge to Bruce’s voice when he spoke.

“Tony. Stop. Fucking. Around. Or else go away.”

There was a long moment of silence, and then Tony tossed something else on the bed.

“An adjustable cock ring. That’s handy.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to call and ask what size you wore,” Bruce said.

“At least I know what to do with this,” Tony said, and Clint jumped at the touch of hands around his cock, and then the strap tightening uncomfortably around the base of it.

“That’s too tight,” he protested.

“You’ll live,” Bruce said.

“Now, this is interesting,” Tony said, and Clint tugged to get a hand free and lift the blindfold, but instead Bruce directed his hand to rest on what Tony was holding, which was a long, rather thick object, somewhat flexible, and ridged along its length like a stack of rings.

“It’s bright purple, if that makes it any less alarming,” Bruce said, chuckling.

“Umm… you were planning on doing what with this?” Tony asked.

“Beating you over the fucking head with it,” Bruce snapped. “If you can’t settle down and start using your brain for something useful, I’m going to make you go sit in the corner.”

Despite the silliness of the threat, Clint felt the rumble in Bruce’s chest against his back, and it slid down into his stomach and made him breathe a little harder. Apparently Tony got the hint, too, because there was another moment of rummaging in the drawer, and then the bed shifted as he settled between Clint’s legs, taking a moment to run his hands over the tight muscles of his thighs and abdomen.

“Does he have any idea how hot he is?” Tony asked.

“We’ll make sure he does,” Bruce said.

Tony sat back on his heels and gave Bruce a silent, questioning glance.

“Go with it,” Bruce answered, and his eyes had an answer, too. No doubts and no questioning each other, not right now. Time for that later, if things didn’t go right. Not now.

Clint would have expected that Tony and Bruce would have been nicer, would have prepared him a little bit before the slick but still broad thing Tony was wielding was pressing firmly, demanding entrance. He tensed, resisting, but then Bruce’s mouth was working its way slowly along his cheek and down to his jaw.

“Easy, there. I’ve seen Thor with no clothes on and I _know_ you can handle this.”

Clint couldn’t help but smile slightly at that, and he tried to focus on Bruce’s voice, but that was really fucking hard to do when Tony was working the damn thing into him, slowly, making sure he felt every ridge of it. The burn was sharp and he arched his back and whined in protest, but Bruce just kissed him and tugged at his lip with his teeth.

“You can tell us to stop,” he murmured.

Clint squirmed and the sharp exclamation was definitely more discomfort than pleasure, and Tony glanced up at Bruce, who nodded, so he kept on with what he was doing.

Clint felt a flash of alarm rise in his chest, knowing that this was when he needed to be tied up, tied down, have a gun to his head, something to keep him there through the rising adrenaline. He jerked his hands sharply free of Bruce’s grip and reached for Tony.

Bruce grabbed for his wrists again, and at the same time Tony jerked back, pulling out the toy with one quick motion. Clint arched back against Bruce’s chest, gasping both at the burn and at the sudden emptiness.

“See, now I’m going to have to start all over,” Tony said. “And believe me… I’m going to make sure you feel every single inch of that thing again.”

Clint forced himself to be still, and realized that he was breathing hard, that the adrenaline rush and the need to fight or escape was rising in his throat, and there was nothing but hands and words to keep him there, and that with a quick flip of his legs he could have Tony in a lock that would put him to sleep, and with a jerk of his arms he could have Bruce on the floor with his hands around his throat, and he let those thoughts flash through his mind, knowing he could do those things. Knowing he didn’t have to. Knowing that they hadn’t bound him or restrained him, even though they knew he could hurt them. Knowing they were trusting him.

“You okay now?” Bruce asked quietly.

Clint nodded.

Tony went back to what he was doing, and Clint cursed and swore and twisted in Bruce’s arms, because now he was already sore and Tony was keeping his word about making sure Clint felt every little bit of what he was doing. But after some unknown amount of time, the discomfort was still there, but it had started to slip off into the back of his mind, along with all the other thoughts, and he was aware only of sensations of touch: of Bruce’s lips against his neck and shoulder, Bruce’s arms against his sides, Tony’s hand stroking along the inside of his thigh, the heat of Tony’s body against his legs.

He realized Tony had stopped, and that now he was leaning over him, his tongue tracing warm lines over his stomach, his chin and jaw brushing against his cock. He heard the sound that escaped him, this time one that was definitely more want and need than anything else, and Tony muttered his approval against Clint’s skin.

“I think he wants something,” Bruce said.

Tony chuckled, and in the next motion he was sliding his lips over the head of Clint’s cock. Clint, startled, jerked against Bruce’s grip, but not hard enough to get away, and Bruce tightened his arms slightly, drew him in, wrapped him up, held him firm as Tony got to work on what both of the other two already knew he was extremely good at when he put his mind to it. It didn’t take him long to have Clint cursing and writhing and begging all at the same time, but even without the strap tight around the base of his cock, Tony wasn’t going to let him go that easily. The part of Clint’s brain that could still think noted that it really wasn’t fair that now, with each caress of Tony’s tongue or hint of his teeth, Clint’s body involuntarily betrayed him by tightening hard around the toy that Tony apparently had no intention of removing, and each time he moved against it, it hurt more and he didn’t care at all.

He didn’t realize he was pleading with them to let him come until Bruce chuckled and shook his head.

“Not yet. You’re okay for now.”

“Aww, fuck… please…”

“No… because once we let you come, you’ll want to be done playing, and we’re not done yet. I’m pretty sure Tony plans to fuck you really, really hard in exchange for all those nice things he’s doing to you right now…”

“Shit…”

“And after that, Clint…”

“What?”

“After that, I’m going to fuck you. Slowly. Until you can’t even think.”

Clint muttered something that had no resemblance to actual words and let his head fall back against Bruce’s shoulder. Bruce could feel his arms start to shake, and he gave Tony a quick tap with his foot. Tony looked up, took note of the state Clint was in, and grinned.

He took considerably more care sliding the toy out this time, but Clint wouldn’t have cared either way; he only whined in protest at the loss of it. Tony slid up and kissed him.

“How hard do you want me to fuck you, Clint?”

“I don’t… just… please?”

“How hard do you want me to fuck you, Clint?”

“Fuck… hard. Really hard. As hard as… please…”

Tony met Bruce’s eyes over Clint’s shoulder. “Goddamn, have you ever heard anything as hot as Agent fucking Barton begging you to fuck him as hard as you can?”

“I might have, but my brain’s not quite in full recall mode right now,” Bruce said. “If I were you, I’d stop talking about it and get to it.”

Tony wasn’t kidding about fucking him hard, either. Bruce felt every impact as their bodies came together and Clint was slammed back against his chest over and over again, his hair dark with sweat, gasping for the breath that Tony kept knocking out of him with each thrust. Bruce’s eyes were fixed on his face, watching the shift of it, waiting for some sign that they were pushing him too hard or too far, but even though he could feel Clint’s muscles shaking, his hands were clutching at Bruce’s arms in a desperate grip, making no attempt to get free. He wondered for a moment if that was too rough, considering how bruised and sore Clint already was, but he didn’t see or hear anything that even remotely resembled a protest from Clint, so he just held onto him and wondered in the back of his head if Tony had needed this almost as much as Clint had.

Since Clint was keeping his own hands busy digging into Bruce’s arms, Bruce slid his hands out and let them run along the muscles of Tony’s back, trace up and over their heads where they rested together against him, sliding up Clint’s throat to feel the pulse pounding in the hollow of it. Eventually Tony shuddered and started to slump, but somehow he managed to have enough sense left in his head to slide down next to Clint instead of on top of him. Bruce reached down and stroked the head of dark hair that was resting on Clint’s chest. Tony caught his breath and looked up.

“Everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine,” Bruce said, feeling the painfully tight grip of Clint’s fingers around his arms start to relax just slightly. “You’re okay, right, Clint?”

Clint nodded slowly, his eyes still closed, still breathing hard.

“If you’re not okay, you have to tell us,” Bruce said.

Clint smiled slightly. “Didn’t Natasha tell you? That’s not how I work.”

“That makes things a little difficult, you know.”

“Yup,” he murmured, and he looked up at Bruce, his eyes dark and unfocused and hazy. “What are you going to do about it?”

“Be careful,” Bruce said. “And wish you weren’t such an asshole.”

He gently pried Clint’s fingers off his arms and let them latch onto Tony instead as he laid them both back down on the bed.

“You look comfy. Maybe I should just leave you like this.”

“That,” Clint said, waving one hand in the general direction of his still bound and painfully hard cock, “is not even sort of comfy.”

“Oh, and you expect me to do something about it? I could just leave you like that.”

Clint opened one eye again. “Don’t.”

“Ask nicely.”

Clint seemed to consider this for a moment. “Please don’t.”

“Well, when you ask like that…”

He reached down and unsnapped the cock ring, and Clint breathed a sharp sigh of relief.

“What do you want?”

“You,” Clint murmured.

“How do you want me?”

“Any way that I don’t have to move or do anything.”

Bruce chuckled and reached for the supplies Tony had left strewn across the bed.

After how hard Tony had worked him, Bruce had planned to go easy, to be nice and let him have the release they’d been denying him for what seemed like a really long time. He wasn’t counting on the fact that even pushed to the point of begging, Clint would still have the self-restraint to hold himself back and let go when he wanted to. And he wasn’t counting on how yielding and pliant Clint would be beneath him, or how gentle his calloused archer’s hands would be as they slid over his skin. And he definitely hadn’t planned on Tony’s hands joining Clint’s, stroking both of them with surprisingly light, quick touches. He dimly realized that he’d entirely lost track of who was supposed to be in charge and who was supposed to be keeping this situation under control and that he didn’t care. He didn’t manage to draw things out nearly as long as he’d planned to, because it all felt too good, from Clint’s tight heat around his cock to Tony’s hand against the back of his neck, and he kept just enough functioning in his brain to be half-aware of Clint arching up and shouting through gritted teeth as he surrendered just a heartbeat before Bruce did.

 

 

“You still alive, Bruce?” Tony asked, after a while, raising his head to look over at him.

“Seem to be,” Bruce said. His hand was resting over Tony’s on Clint’s chest, both of them feeling the racing heartbeat start to slow to something like normal.

“Clint?”

Clint muttered something and turned his head. Tony grinned and ran his hand across his cheek, drawing a lazy scowl and a half-hearted swat.

“What, you want us to leave you alone?” Tony asked.

Clint’s eyes were still closed, but his hands shot out with surprising speed, although without much direction, and managed to latch onto Tony’ shoulder and Bruce’s hair, pulling them both closer.

“We’re not leaving,” Tony said, running a hand through his sweat-darkened hair. “Promise. Not till you want us to.”

“How’d we do, all things considered?” Bruce asked.

The hint of a smile on Clint’s face was fleeting, but it was enough.

“You’re both assholes,” he mumbled.

“Everybody knows that,” Tony said.

They stayed where they were for a while, and Clint seemed to have dozed off, but he wasn’t letting go of his grip on either of them.

“So we just stay here with him?” Tony asked.

“Do you have somewhere more important to be?” Bruce asked.

Tony glanced down at the bruised but momentarily peaceful face of the man resting between them.

“No,” he said. “I don’t.”


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve attempts to deal with why three guys are naked in bed together. Bruce enlists Clint's assistance to deal with Tony being an ass. Natasha gives not-reassuring answers to questions. Thor just wants to know what ninjas are and why they were in Tony's shower.

 

 

Tony did not consider this particular hour of early dawn a decent time to call “morning”, but apparently someone did, because someone was knocking at the door. He yawned and tried to sort out exactly what his arms and legs and hands were up to, as there seemed to be a lot of arms and legs and hands in the bed at the moment.

“JARVIS, who the fuck is at the door?”

“Agent Barton is supposed to have antibiotics every twelve hours to prevent infection of his head injury and it has been more than twelve hours since his last dose. Also, he has not had any pain medication for more than twelve hours and may be in need of some…”

“Fine, fine,” Tony muttered.

He expected Natasha to open the door. Possibly Thor. Definitely not Captain America.

Bruce had just regained enough consciousness to blink sleepily up at Steve.

“Hey. What are you doing here?”

Steve stood in the doorway, staring at the three of them with a blank expression. Tony glanced over and realized that Clint was wide awake, although his arm was still wrapped around Tony’s waist and his other hand still tangled with Bruce’s.

“Three men naked in bed together a little outside your comfort zone?” Tony asked.

Steve opened his mouth, then closed it.

“Don’t worry,” Bruce said. “I’m still not exactly sure when it moved into my comfort zone, frankly.”

“I don’t have a comfort zone,” Clint said.

“No… I think your problem is that you don’t have a non-comfort zone,” Tony said.

Clint shrugged. “That’s possible too. Oww…”

“You okay?”

“Fuck. Ouch. No. I hurt.”

Steve held up the small tray he was carrying. “Natasha’s still sleeping… I convinced her to stay in bed and let me bring this stuff down, although now I know why she was giggling about it so much…”

Tony sat up and took the tray. “Hmm. Antibiotics… pain pills… a few more pain pills…”

“She said something about Agent Barton possibly needing some extra pain medication this morning,” Steve said, and Tony swore he was trying not to smile.

“She wasn’t fucking kidding,” Clint muttered. “Is that another vial of that stuff from yesterday that you nut jobs came up with in your lab?”

“It worked,” Bruce said. “Loki decided to pop in, but he couldn’t hide… and if he can’t hide, we can help you fight him off.”

“I didn’t say it didn’t work,” Clint said. “It just tastes like donkey balls.”

Tony sighed. “See, Bruce, I told you we should have used the bubble gum flavor instead of the donkey balls flavor.”

“Fuck off. All of you. Well, not Steve. He’s not being a dick. Yet. Are you going to start being a dick, too?”

Steve handed Clint a bottle of water. “I wasn’t planning on it.”

Tony grinned. “I see you looking at the floor.”

Steve raised an eyebrow. “The purple thing is…”

“Oh, come on. You can figure out…”

“I wasn’t going to ask you what it was,” Steve said. “I was just going to say that Natasha has the same one… except it’s black.”

“We argued about that,” Bruce said. “At the store. There was only one black one left and she left me stuck with the purple one.”

Tony snorted, and Clint grinned, and Steve tried to keep a straight face.

“What else does Natasha have that you’ve gotten to see?” Tony asked, curious.

Steve smiled slightly. “A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell.”

“Aww, come on.”

Steve glanced over his shoulder before speaking. “All I’m going to tell you is that if JARVIS keeps having to put in supply orders for more batteries, you might start to figure it out.”

Clint made a gagging sound and shoved the empty vial at Tony. “Just smell this and tell me you’d want to drink it.”

Tony took a sniff and made a face. “Ugh. Bruce, you didn’t tell me it actually smelled like donkey balls.”

“I have no personal experience with donkey balls,” Bruce said.

“Well, this is what they smell like,” Tony said, shoving the vial at him. “If we’re going to make him drink the stuff, at least make it a little less hideous.”

“Why exactly do you know what donkey balls smell like?” Bruce asked.

Steve rubbed his face. “Is there anything else you guys need?”

“You sure you don’t want to join us?” Tony asked.

Bruce glared at him, and Steve turned slightly red.

“Umm… no. You all look very nice and comfortable without me. I’ll pass.”

“Oh, come on,” Tony said cheerfully. “You could just grab some of that stuff off the floor there and…”

Steve’s eyebrows shot up. “I’m not touching anything in this room.”

“Actually,” Tony said, “all things considered, that was the first thing in Clint’s ass last night, so technically it’s probably the cleanest of…”

“Stop it,” Bruce said, leaning over Clint to slap Tony in the head.

“I am not having this conversation,” Steve said, closing his eyes. “And I am not even going to _think_ about what you just said.”

“You’re thinking about it right now,” Tony said, grinning broadly. “You’re trying to think about how many other things in this room would fit in Clint’s ass, aren’t you?”

“Damnit, Tony…” Bruce muttered, and slapped him again, and this time Clint slapped him too, just for good measure.

“Ow! What? You know that’s what he’s thinking about…”

“It is not!” Steve protested.

“Now would be a fine time to stop talking about my ass,” Clint said.

“Yeah… I’m leaving,” Steve said.

 

 

 

Bruce sat up and gave Tony a dirty look. “What the hell did you do that for?”

“What?”

“The guy actually got up the nerve to come in here and attempt to stand here and deal with this, and you had to go and be a complete dick.”

“Did you really expect anything different?” Clint asked.

Bruce sighed. “Not really.”

Clint tried to sit up, but made a small complaining noise and slumped back down.

“Oww. Seriously.”

Bruce pressed him back against the pillows. “Why don’t you just stay where you are until that pain medication kicks in?”

“It shouldn’t take long,” Tony said. “Apparently Natasha wasn’t feeling stingy with the pain pills today… you ought to be feeling pretty good pretty soon.”

“She just figures if I’m drugged up I won’t be able to do anything stupid,” Clint muttered.

“You sure it’s not just that she knows you spent the night before last getting beat up by the Hulk and last night getting beat up by us and figured you might need it?”

Clint grinned. “You two together couldn’t beat me up if you tried.”

“Oh, yeah?” Tony asked. “Hundred bucks says you can’t walk properly all day today.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t fuck me sore. I said you couldn’t beat me up. There’s a difference.”

Tony shrugged. “Point taken. I’m hungry. Are you hungry?”

“I’m too sore to be hungry,” Clint said.

“Well, maybe Tony should go find us something to eat and I’ll stick around here with you until you start to feel a little less sore,” Bruce said.

“When I said I was hungry, I didn’t mean I actually wanted to get up and go do something about it,” Tony said. “I was going to try to get you to do that.”

Clint yawned and settled back in between them. “Nobody has to go anywhere right this minute, do they?”

Tony raised an eyebrow and opened his mouth to say something, but Bruce punched him in the arm, and he closed it.

“We’re very happy with Clint exactly where he is,” Bruce said, “and we’re not going to be idiots and make smart-ass comments about him being here, because then Clint is likely to have second thoughts about being here again, and if that happens, I will let the Other Guy come after you for it.”

“Let me get my suit on first, and you’ve got yourself a fight,” Tony said.

Clint glanced at both of them. “Are you trying to tell Tony that now that you guys have managed to talk me into this, you don’t want him fucking it up with…”

“I don’t know if it was the talking that got you into this,” Tony said.

“Do you need to be punched again?” Bruce asked.

“Yes,” Clint said, and punched him.

“Ow! Fuck. You hit a lot harder than Bruce.”

“I’m a master assassin, dumbass. I could put you both to sleep in ten seconds if I wanted to… except it would hurt to move that much.”

Bruce gave Tony one more dirty look and then tucked himself back down into bed against Clint. Tony shrugged and settled himself back in on the other side of him. Clint’s hand ruffled through his hair.

“You need a shower,” he said absently.

“Me? You’re one to talk.”

“As soon as everybody’s up for it, we’ll get showered and go find some breakfast,” Bruce said.

 

 

 

 

Getting all three of them showered took quite a bit longer than was really necessary. Once the variety of pills and other things hit his brain, Clint wasn’t as steady on his feet as Bruce would have liked, especially in a slippery shower, and especially with Tony apparently deciding that he still had to prove his ability to knock Clint on his ass. And, of course, Bruce could try to ignore the fact that the reason he was holding Clint up was because the things Tony’s mouth was doing to his cock had taken his knees right out from under him, but trying to ignore it wasn’t helping much, especially when Clint gasped and his hips jerked and he almost slipped out of Bruce’s grasp.

He tugged Clint back to his feet and stuck his face under the shower, drawing muffled, sputtering protests, while Tony popped up looking exceedingly pleased with himself.

“Well, now you’ve about put Clint unconscious again,” Bruce muttered, “and I’m going to need a cold shower before I can go into the kitchen… or anywhere with people.”

“Can fix that,” Tony said.

Clint grinned lazily and leaned toward Tony. Bruce raised his eyebrows.

“What’d you have in mind?”

“Well, Clint seems to be feeling pretty good at the moment, if you…”

Bruce shook his head. “Clint’s had enough for now.”

“I’ll tell you when I’ve had enough,” Clint protested.

“No, you won’t, and we’ve already established this,” Bruce said.

“Oh. Right.”

“So…” Tony said, looking a bit unsettled.

Bruce looked over at Clint. “Are you okay to keep hold of Tony for me for a few minutes?”

Clint laughed. “I’ve been in worse shape than this and pinned guys bigger than him.”

“Now, wait a minute…” Tony said.

Bruce nodded. “Clint, put him up against the wall. Hands behind his back. And keep him there for a minute.”

“Yessir,” Clint said, grinning, and before Tony could move he had snapped his arms out and spun Tony around and pinned him hard, his face pressed against the tile.

“Hey! Hang on, now! I should get to have my suit on before I…”

“Be quiet,” Bruce said, grabbing a towel and disappearing out into the bedroom. He was back a minute later, and Clint raised his eyebrows at seeing the bottle of lube in his hand, but Tony’s face was turned the other way and he couldn’t see anything.

“This isn’t fair. I don’t like this.”

“Same rules apply,” Bruce said evenly. “Tell us to stop, and we’ll stop. Otherwise, you can bitch and moan all you want and we’ll just ignore you, because I know perfectly well that there’s part of that very busy brain of yours that really, really wants to be put up against a wall and fucked senseless and not be able to do a damn thing about it.”

“I didn’t agree to that!”

Bruce laughed and tossed the towel aside and climbed back into the warm steam of the shower. Clint slid slightly to the side without easing his firm grip on Tony’s arms behind his back.

“Can you hold him like that one-handed?” Bruce asked.

“Of course I can.”

“Good. Let me see what you can do with your other hand.”

Clint held out his hand, and Bruce poured a generous amount of lube into it. Tony squirmed.

“Hey, now. Come on. I… fuck!”

Bruce might have been a fast learner when it came to what to do with other men, but Clint apparently had a fucking Master’s degree, because his two fingers slid in with expert precision and with a few quick motions had targeted exactly the spot that would make Tony slump against the wall and shove his hips back against Clint’s hand without even realizing he was doing it. He was brisk, methodical, thorough, and well-trained, and it took him very little time to turn Tony’s protests into desperate wordless sounds as he shuddered under Clint’s touch.

“He worked up enough for you now?” Clint asked.

“That should do nicely,” Bruce said, amused. “Something told me you’d know how to put him in the right state of mind.”

“You want me to keep holding onto him?”

“Oh, yes. Definitely.”

He shouldered his way in beside Clint and found that it was remarkable how easy it was to slide in once Tony had already been worked over so thoroughly by someone who obviously knew exactly what they were doing.

“I think you’re going to have to teach me some things,” Bruce said breathlessly, feeling Clint against his side as Tony tightened around his cock.

“Don’t even think about it,” Tony gasped. “If both of you can do that shit you’ll fucking kill me…”

“He’s still running his mouth, Clint.”

Clint grinned and twisted Tony’s arm until he moaned and arched his back to ease the pressure, and that put him at exactly the right angle for Bruce to start fucking him into the wall. He tried to keep an ear tuned for anything that sounded like “stop” but heard nothing of the sort, and nothing besides increasingly desperate moans and then finally some frantic, incoherent pleading. Bruce managed to get his brain together long enough to give Clint a quick nod between thrusts. Clint got the idea, apparently, because Tony was shouting as Clint’s hand worked him over the edge.

“Fuck,” Tony muttered, as Clint let go of his arms and Bruce pulled him away from the wall.

“You loved it.”

“Bastards.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Bruce said, steering him under the running water. “I know. You hated every minute of it.”

“Clint shouldn’t be allowed to do that to people.”

“The assassin moves or the other part?”

“Any of it. Especially the sex parts. That should be illegal. I think it _is_ illegal.”

Clint grinned smugly. “You’re welcome. Get washed up… I want some breakfast now too.”

 

 

 

It seemed fairly likely that all three of them were looking somewhat disheveled when they stumbled into the living room, and it was fairly obvious that Clint was having some difficulty walking, although whether to attribute this to drugs or other activities wasn’t immediately clear, or else it was a combination of both. Natasha took note of all of it from her perch at the kitchen counter, then returned her attention to the eggs Steve was cooking on the stove. Thor was sprawled on the couch with his feet on the coffee table, but instead of his usual boisterous greeting, he gave them only a subdued nod.

“Sit, before you fall,” Bruce said, pushing Clint toward the couch. “Tony and I will go see what we can dig up for breakfast.”

“I can make you some scrambled eggs,” Steve said.

“You’re willing to make me scrambled eggs after I freaked you out on purpose?” Tony asked.

“Yes.”

Natasha’s eyes narrowed. “What did you do to freak him out?”

“Oops,” Tony said, turning on his heels and walking back off toward the couch.

Clint landed on the couch with a thump that made Thor look over at him with an expression of concern.

“Are you all right, little Hawk?”

Clint waved his hand. “Yup. I’m okay.”

“You seem a bit…”

“Well, half of it’s that he’s high on pain pills, and the other half of it is that he’s still putting his brain together after last night,” Tony said.

“Is there anything you won’t brag about?” Natasha asked, rolling her eyes.

“Probably. Let me think about it.”

Clint glanced at Thor and grinned knowingly. “He’s not bragging about this morning.”

Tony gave him a sharp look. “Yeah, well… that’s because that’s cheating, with you and your fucking ninja assassin moves attacking me undefended in the shower…”

Natasha snorted into her orange juice. Tony paused, hand still raised.

“Like I said, at which point absolutely nothing happened except that I made one of my usual clever patented Tony Stark escapes. And nothing else.”

“Good one, Tony,” Bruce said.

“Smooth as a bag of trail mix,” Natasha noted.

“You can all fuck off now,” Tony said, scowling.

Thor tapped Clint on the shoulder. “What is a ninja?”

“I think we have some more movies to watch,” Natasha said.

“Does it involve sex?”

“Not usually,” she said. “But somehow it seems like if you’re dealing with certain people, everything ends up involving sex.”

Thor smiled and patted Clint on the back. “Well, I’m glad you’ve been having fun, then.”

Clint looked back at him and tried to get his brain to cooperate.

“I was an asshole.”

“What?”

“To you. I shouldn’t have been… you’re pretty much the only person here that doesn’t deserve me being an asshole. Well, except Steve, because he can behave like a normal human being and he wouldn’t let Tony tell him about things that...”

“You know what? Let’s not go there,” Bruce suggested.

Clint grinned at him before turning back to Thor. “Anyway…”

“I accept your somewhat incoherent apology, my friend,” Thor said, lunging at him  for one of his usual massive Asgardian bear-hugs before he remembered to handle him a little more gently. “I’m glad you’re not angry with me.”

“Is it possible to stay angry with you?” Clint asked. “Because I was trying, and I couldn’t do it.”

Thor smiled broadly and rubbed his head. “I’m glad, little Hawk.”

“Well… you know I can’t promise not to be an asshole again.”

Natasha raised her hand. “I can promise you he _will_ be an asshole again.”

“I will be prepared,” Thor said cheerfully.

 

 

 

The others were busy with their food when Bruce took the opportunity to pull Natasha aside unnoticed. She followed him out into the hall, arms crossed.

“If this is something stupid about playing with Tony, you got yourself into that one.”

“Totally guilty on that one,” he agreed. “But this is about Clint.”

She leaned back against the wall. “All right. But you know, I’ve already given away an awful lot of his personal business in the name of keeping him safe, so let’s keep it to things relevant to that, okay?”

“Fair enough,” Bruce said. “Two questions.”

“Okay.”

“First one… how much is sex involved in undercover missions? I mean, you don’t have to…”

She raised an eyebrow. “Officially, none. Off the record, it depends on the agent and the situation and the risks the agent is willing to take. It puts you in an extremely dangerous position, physically and mentally. So you can probably guess the answer to that question if you’re asking about Clint.”

“Second question.”

“Yeah?”

“I… get the idea that Clint’s more than capable of topping when he wants to.”

She smiled slightly. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with what Tony was…”

“Maybe. But I’m asking for a reason.”

“Yes, he’s fully capable of it. And extremely good at it. When he’s on a mission.”

“And when he’s not on a mission?”

She sighed. “Honestly? When Clint’s on a mission he’s in control. Of everything. When he’s not on a mission, he’s not in control. And situations get out of hand really quickly. And when it’s Clint, either he has to go down, or someone else does. And he gets in a lot less trouble and does a lot less harm if it’s him going down.”

“Something bad happen?”

“Multiple ‘something bad’ happened,” she said. “It’s all off the record and I’m not going to talk about it. But if you’re going to try to play with him like that…”

“We got him to go under without hurting him or threatening him,” Bruce said.

“Huh,” she said. “That’s… a pretty good sign, actually. But that doesn’t mean… look, just tell me what you’re thinking and I’ll tell you how dumb an idea I think it is.”

“If he’s going to be able to really trust us… with what’s in his head, not just with his body… and especially after everything with the Other Guy and all that…”

“He’s not going to be able to trust you that way unless he knows you trust _him_ that way.”

“Yeah.”

Natasha bit her lip. “I’m not sure you can trust him that way, though. With or without Loki in the mix.”

“Yeah, but if somebody doesn’t try…”

“I understand what you’re saying,” she said, shifting her weight uneasily. “But you’ve got to understand that you or Tony could end up seriously hurt, and that won’t be good for anybody.”

“Are you telling me it’s not worth the risk?”

“I… I guess I’m telling you that it’s your risk to take,” she said slowly.

“Would you do it?”

“I can’t,” she said. “You’re talking about trust… that’s something that doesn’t exist for me anymore. I don’t remember if it ever did. I don’t know why it still exists for Clint… maybe that’s what Loki saw in him, that he was still capable of it. But I know I’m not.”

“If you could…”

She smiled ruefully. “There’s not much I wouldn’t do for Clint. If I could. And Bruce… you realize that if something bad does happen, there’s the possibility of having the Other Guy to deal with…”

“Yeah,” Bruce said. “But that part’s my problem. Come on… we’d better get back in there before Tony starts to think we’re conspiring against him.”

 

 

 

 


	26. Chapter 26

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nobody in this story should ever relax. It's a bad idea. And they should definitely never, ever assume that things are under control.

 

 

 

Thor continued to insist that he be informed about ninjas, so Natasha asked JARVIS to pull up some classic ninja movies and start them playing on the screen in the living room while she and Steve cleaned up the breakfast dishes. It didn’t take long for Tony to get bored with the movie and start poking and harassing Bruce, who tolerated it for a few minutes before finally snapping at him.

“What do you want?”

“I think we should go somewhere.”

“Just somewhere? You going to pick a random location?”

“No… I think we should go visit a friend of mine.”

Bruce raised his eyebrows. “Since when do you have friends?”

“Fine. I think we should go visit a neurologist associate of mine who doesn’t like me very much but knows I pay well for consults.”

“That sounds more reasonable. Why do I have to go with you?”

“Because you know more about that stuff than I do, and I’ll just piss him off anyway.”

Natasha glanced over her shoulder. “Just go with him. The less trouble he gets in, the less I have to hear about it from Fury.”

With Bruce and Tony gone, Natasha settled down on the couch. She might have been able to convince Steve to join them if Clint hadn’t been half-sleeping draped across Thor’s lap, and particularly if Thor hadn’t been absently rubbing his back and shoulders and the back of his head and a few other parts of him in lazily suggestive ways that Steve apparently didn’t approve of.

“I think I’ll just go get some training in,” he said.

Natasha shrugged. “Suit yourself. It’s not like Thor’s going to fuck him on the couch while we’re sitting here. Now, if Tony was still here, he might…”

Steve’s face reddened. “That’s all right. I… have things to do. Anyway. Training things.”

He quickly disappeared. Natasha sighed and leaned back against the couch, grabbing Clint’s bare foot.

“I don’t know about that boy. Then again, I suppose this would sort of qualify as a crash course in 21st century sexuality…”

Clint yawned and kicked his foot out of her reach. “Quit. That tickles.”

“Did you have fun with Bruce and Tony last night?”

He glanced at her with one eye. “Why do you want to know?”

“Curiosity.”

“I must admit that I share Natasha’s curiosity,” Thor said, running a hand over Clint’s ass.

“Is there anyone here that isn’t a voyeur?” Clint asked.

“First of all, no,” Natasha said. “Second of all, the only two people currently here have both already slept with you, so it’s not like you’ve got any secrets from either of us. And third of all, I don’t recall you asking JARVIS to turn off the cameras before anything that went on up there, so…”

“You were watching?” Clint asked, slightly more alert.

“No, actually. I was just checking in with JARVIS to make sure everyone was okay. So… what’s it like, being with the two of them together?”

Clint buried his face in a pillow. “You don’t get to ask me stuff like that.”

“Fine. I’ll just use my imagination,” she said.

Now he had to roll halfway over to look up at her. “I thought you didn’t…”

She laughed and patted his leg. “I told you I wasn’t going to sleep with you anymore, Clint. I never said I stopped finding you attractive. There’s a difference, you know.”

“I… oh. Then why…”

Her smile faded. “You know why, Clint. I love you too much to fuck you. You and Thor have fun watching your ninja movies… I’m going to watch something else.”

Clint’s eyes widened. “I didn’t say you could watch that!”

She grinned. “You didn’t say I couldn’t. Go ahead… tell me I’m not allowed to watch it. You know you want me to watch it. It’s getting under your skin just thinking about me watching it, isn’t it?”

He glared at her. “Not fair.”

“I’m not going to watch it, idiot. Technically, I’d probably have to ask Bruce and Tony for permission, and Tony would be a massive dick about it. Not that he’d say no… he’d just be a dick about it.”

“Probably.”

“Enjoy your movies, boys.”

 

 

 

 

 

Thor watched her go before tugging and rolling Clint into a more convenient position. Clint yawned and leaned back against his chest.

“What are you up to?” he asked.

“Nothing in particular,” Thor said. “These are some very nice bruises here…”

“Oh, the hickeys?”

Thor chuckled and traced the marks with his lips. “Is that what they’re called?”

“Depends on who you ask. You’re really not supposed to put them where people can see them unless you’re a horny teenager or something.”

“Who put these here?”

“Hmm. Bruce.”

“I see,” Thor murmured, his hands wandering across Clint’s chest. “It appears he must have had you right here, where I have you now.”

Clint made another noncommittal sound, but Thor bit lightly at his shoulder and slid his hand lower.

“Was he holding you while Tony took you?”

Clint shifted, and Thor felt his breathing change under his hands. “Maybe. I thought you didn’t want to do this anymore. Because of Loki. And if you’re just messing around…”

Thor pulled him closer and rumbled against the side of his neck. “Nothing would amuse Loki more than to know that he had the power to keep me away from something I love. I will not allow it. If he tries to make me regret my choice, I’ll make sure he’s the one who regrets his meddling.”

Clint found himself wide awake, because all of them had gotten used to Thor’s loud but good-natured and mild-toned voice, and this was the battleground growl that they didn’t hear, and it took a direct path from Clint’s ears to other parts of him that were now taking full interest in the proceedings. And there had been a word in there that he decided not to mention, because it tended to lead to complicated discussions and, for him, historically lousy results, but it still settled somewhere in his gut.

“If you still want me…” Thor murmured.

Clint grabbed his big hand and led it down to feel his cock through his jeans. “What do you think?”

Thor smiled and squeezed lightly. “That seems to be a good sign.”

With surprising dexterity, he popped the button and worked the zipper of Clint’s jeans with only one hand, and then he had that hand wrapped loosely around Clint’s cock and was stroking it slowly. Clint squirmed and shifted himself to provide easier access, and Thor hooked one leg around his hip to pull him in closer.

“This is sort of the living room…” Clint murmured.

“Is that a problem?” Thor asked.

“Fuck… only if… hell, I don’t care.”

“I didn’t think so.”

He kept up his slow motions, despite Clint’s protests, and when Clint tried to get his own hands into the action, Thor wrapped his free arm across his chest, pinning his arms down and leaving him with nothing to do but twist and writhe and curse until Thor took pity on him and let him come.

“You do have a most interesting vocabulary,” Thor said, as he reached for one of the numerous stacks of napkins from various take-out and delivery establishments scattered across the coffee table.

“You should hear Natasha,” Clint said breathlessly. “She can swear fluently in four languages. Maybe five. I can’t keep track. And she lies.”

Thor chuckled as he tucked Clint back into his pants. Clint tipped his head back to look up at him.

“I should do something for you…”

“Perhaps later,” Thor said, settling back and making himself comfortable. “Right now, you’re going to fall asleep.”

“I am not,” Clint said, and then he did anyway.

 

 

 

 

“Well, you could have explained the situation to him a little more clearly,” Bruce said, as he and Tony stepped out of the elevator.

“Like I was going to tell him I needed some help with a friend of mine who was suffering from neurological issues related to supernatural mind control?” Tony said. “He would’ve thrown me out of his office and told me to stop drinking so early in the morning.”

“Well, it’s afternoon now. Does that mean it’s drinking time?”

“Yeah, but… what’s wrong, Thor?”

Thor was standing in the living room, looking around in bewilderment. He turned to the two men and held out his hands helplessly.

“I don’t understand…”

“Welcome to my life,” Bruce said. “What happened?”

“Clint and I were watching movies and we both must have fallen asleep. He woke me and asked me to come with him to my room… but when we reached my room, he walked back out the door, and I can’t find him.”

“Did you ask JARVIS?”

“Someone tampered with the cameras on the residential floor,” JARVIS replied. “The interference appears to be electrical and coming from inside the building.”

Tony’s head snapped up. “The cameras on that floor are off.”

“Correct.”

“Where the fuck is Clint?”

“I’m unable to determine that. The cameras initially track him leaving the living area unaccompanied twenty-three minutes ago…”

“He couldn’t have left without waking me,” Thor protested.

“According to the cameras, you appeared to be unaware of his departure,” JARVIS said. “He reappears in the living area nineteen minutes ago, wakes you, and you leave the area with him, and then you return here alone. That’s all the cameras have.”

“You mean Clint’s been gone and unsupervised for twenty-three minutes?” Tony demanded

“Twenty-four now,” JARVIS corrected.

“But he was with me…” Thor said, and then his fists tightened and he lowered his head. “That wasn’t Clint, was it.”

“I’m thinking it wasn’t,” Tony said.

“And I’m thinking whoever was pretending to be Clint and trying to distract you also had something to do with making sure you stayed asleep while the real Clint wandered off,” Bruce said, frowning. “JARVIS, put the video up on the screen. The one where Clint leaves the first time.”

Tony watched intently. “He’s talking to someone. There’s somebody with him… or he thinks there is. This is bad. JARVIS, open all the rooms on that floor.”

“There appears to be a malfunction in one of the doors. The mechanism is not responding.”

“Let me guess,” Tony said. “It’s Clint’s room. Fuck. Get Natasha.”

“She is on a private call with Director Fury… revise that; she is on her way here.”

JARVIS had barely finished speaking when Natasha burst into the living room.

“Where’s Clint?”

“We have a problem,” Tony said.

“We have a bigger problem than you think,” Natasha said, eyes as wide as Tony had ever seen them.

“Why?”

“Because Fury got a message from Asgard this morning, and he wanted to make sure we were on the alert, just in case…”

“Loki got loose,” Bruce said.

Natasha nodded. “Disappeared out of his prison cell. They didn’t think he’d come here, considering that out of all the worlds, this one’s still on the alert for him…”

“Loki doesn’t let such things worry him when there’s something he wants,” Thor said.

“And Clint’s locked in his room and someone overrode the door lock and all the fucking cameras,” Tony said.

“What?” Natasha demanded. “Shit. How long?”

“Way too long. Let’s go.”

 

 


	27. Chapter 27

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felt bad about the cliffhanger. I hate cliffhangers. Don't you? ANYWAY. So I took pity on everyone (including myself) and got another chapter written. And one might mind the warnings for the violence and non-con sorts of things. Don't worry... if anything really horrible was going to happen, I'd let you know.

 

 

Still fuzzy from sleep, Clint wandered into his room with Natasha beside him without thinking much about it. Then it occurred to him that he wasn’t supposed to be in his room, because his room was full of sharp things and explosives, and nobody knew that better than Natasha. His mind was working its way around that, and why she would bring him in here, and then the door slid shut, and he suddenly realized that Natasha _wouldn’t_ bring him in here.

“This is bad, isn’t it,” he said, without turning to look at her.

“Silly Hawk,” Natasha’s voice answered him. “Of course this is bad.”

He didn’t want to turn around, but he figured he was better off facing an enemy than standing there with his back turned.

“You’re not really here,” he said.

Loki grinned at him. “I beg to differ.”

“You’re locked up. You can’t…”

“Capturing the living incarnation of trickery is one thing,” Loki said. “Keeping it imprisoned is quite another.”

“They took your powers away.”

“Some of them,” Loki said, shrugging. “I don’t suppose I’ll be making any further attempts at world domination in the immediate future.”

“Then what do you want?”

Loki raised his eyebrows. “You, little Hawk.”

Clint shifted on his feet, wishing all the painkillers hadn’t made his motions so clumsy. “Why? You’ve got nine entire worlds of whatever kind of thing you want. Why would you come back here for me?”

He realized he’d hit on something that Loki didn’t want to answer when he saw a flicker of something that might have been frustration disturb the supremely confident smile for just a moment.

“Enough questions,” Loki said.

“You’re not touching me,” Clint said, tensing.

“You intend to stop me? That’s funny,” Loki said, and stepped toward him.

Clint landed a punch that would have dropped a human opponent, but Loki just blinked and then grinned and grabbed Clint by the shoulders and hurled him against the wall. Pain shot through his injured shoulder and ribs, and for a moment his lungs struggled for air.

“You’re not even at your best, after our last meeting. And I didn’t even have to hurt you myself. But now that I’m here to do the job in person, it will be so much more satisfying.”

He dragged Clint away from the wall and threw him onto the bed, leaving him fighting another burst of pain. He gritted his teeth and tried to roll to his knees, to be ready to fight, but before his vision had cleared from the flashing white lights, a blow to his face knocked him sideways and sent pain shooting through his head. He thought absently that he really didn’t need another concussion on top of the one he already had, and then Loki’s hands were straightening him up again, and he had just enough time to wonder why before an equally hard blow to the other side of his face dropped him to the bed, consciousness wavering and a red haze in front of his eyes.

“You want this,” Loki said.

“Fuck you,” Clint muttered.

“Of course. The defiance is just part of the fun, isn’t it.”

He felt strong hands grab his shirt and easily rip the thin fabric, letting the cool air of the room hit his chest. It gave him a brief moment of half-clarity, and then those strong hands were reaching for his jeans, which didn’t rip as easily, and Clint took the opportunity to swing his leg up and land a vicious kick to the side of Loki’s jaw, and then another one to his head as he jerked back.

Loki scowled and rubbed his jaw. “I don’t appreciate that.”

“Then get the fuck off me.”

Loki sighed. “You’re too resilient for your own good, Hawk.”

His movements were so quick that Clint didn’t have time to do anything but try to push him away, but Loki was much stronger, and in an instant he was pinning Clint’s body with his own, and his hands were locked around Clint’s throat.

“Don’t worry,” he said lightly. “I need you at least slightly conscious, and definitely alive.”

Clint swung at him, but each blow lost some force as the lack of air to his lungs started to steal his strength, and the panic started to set in, robbing him of any logical thought. His chest burned and he fought to stay conscious, but blackness was creeping around the edges of his vision, and a half-formed thought flashed through his head that the blackness would be a welcome respite from the desperate, crushing terror of being suffocated. Something somewhere in his head clicked to life, told him that Loki wanted him to welcome the blackness, wanted him to welcome Loki as the relief of pain as well as its source, and he clung to that and forced his eyes to try to focus on the face smiling down at him.

Suddenly, the hands around his throat were gone, and he gasped in a desperate, burning breath that was almost a sob. He was dimly aware of Loki stripping away the rest of his clothes, but he had no strength left to resist, and barely enough to keep pulling air into his lungs.

“You think I would come back here just to play with my brother’s favorite human?” Loki said, sitting back to look at him. “I could have continued that game from my prison cell. You have something I want, little Hawk, and I _will_ have it. And once I have it, I will be quite happy to kill you in whatever painful way will distress my brother the most. But not until then.”

Clint felt cool, strong hands on his thighs, made an almost entirely useless attempt to fight them off, to twist away, but Loki laughed and tightened his grip.

“I thought this was what you liked,” he said. “You want this.”

“No,” Clint managed to force out.

“What was that?”

“No… stop it. Stop.”

Loki chuckled. “I don’t think so, little Hawk.”

Clint’s head spun and the thought floated across it that this wasn’t right; this wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. He’d said ‘stop’… it was supposed to stop now. He was supposed to be safe now. Nobody was supposed to have to hurt him like this anymore.

 

 

 

The door shuddered at the force of the blows rained on it.

“Open this goddamned door, Clint Barton!” Natasha shouted.

Clint couldn’t answer her, but it was Natasha, and they had done this before… well, maybe not exactly this, but they knew the game, and if Clint didn’t answer, the next step was…

The door was abruptly smashed to the floor with a screaming whine of protest, and behind it stood Thor, hammer raised for another blow, eyes on fire.

“Brother…” Loki said, raising his hands.

“I think we’re talking about a different kind of Asgardian justice this time,” Tony said. Natasha shouldered in beside him with her pistol raised and Loki in her sights.

Loki moved, and she pulled the trigger, the shot burying itself in the wall behind Clint’s bed as Loki, faster than anything human could move, made a sudden leap from the bed to Clint’s loft, and as Natasha took aim again, he kicked open the door to the balcony, grabbed a ledge, and was gone.

There was a long moment of silence except for the ringing in everyone’s ears from the gunshot, and then Natasha shoved the gun into Tony’s hands and ran for Clint.

“Shit. Shit. Look at this… look what he did to him… Clint? You there?”

It took him a moment to realize that the hands resting lightly on his bruised face were really Natasha’s.

“I’m here,” he murmured, not sure if she could hear him. If nothing else, she must have seen his lips move, because she stroked his cheek lightly.

“Okay. He’s gone.”

He wanted to try to tell her that something was wrong, that Loki wasn’t just messing with his head anymore, but he realized that if Natasha thought she was dealing with shadows and tricks, she wouldn’t have fired a gun at them.

“I know,” she said gently. “I don’t know what we’re going to do about it, but we’re going to figure something out.”

“He wants something.”

She frowned. “What?”

“He said he wants something. And he needs me alive till he gets it.”

“Don’t worry about that right now, Clint. Just… look at me. Try to focus. Can you breathe?”

“It hurts… but yeah.”

“Okay. Did you get hit in the head?”

“I think so?”

“Yeah, I think so too,” she said, looking over her shoulder. “Do we take him back to the hospital?”

“There’s going to be a lot of bad questions if we do,” Tony said. “The injuries from last time were from him hitting a wall… there’s lots of ways that can happen. There’s really only one way you end up with bruises like that around your throat, and they’re not going to be as laid-back about an obvious assault victim as they were about a guy who was probably doing something dumb.”

“That, and…” Bruce said, and cleared his throat, and lowered his eyes. “If they start checking for… umm… other kinds of assault…”

Natasha winced and ran a hand across Clint’s forehead. “We got here before that, didn’t we?”

Clint nodded.

“Yeah, but does Clint really want to go to the emergency room and explain the part about getting beaten and nearly strangled to death and how that just happened to coincide with some rough consensual sex within the last 24 hours?” Bruce asked. “I’m sorry… but it’s…”

“Don’t be sorry,” Natasha said. “I don’t want him to have to deal with that if he doesn’t have to. Clint? What do you want?”

“I want something to make my head stop hurting and then I want to go to sleep, and I don’t want to go anywhere or talk to anybody.”

“No sleeping for a couple of hours,” Natasha said, keeping her voice even, but through her fingertips she could feel the almost imperceptible trembling as the reality of everything crashed down on him. “But we can get you something for your head. And Bruce and Tony can go off to the lab and start working on the security systems. And Steve can go outside and check the perimeter of the building.  And…”

“Thor can stay,” Clint said, so quietly that even Natasha could barely hear him, but she nodded and gave Thor a quick glance.

“Are you sure he’s…” Tony began.

“We’re being asked to leave,” Bruce interrupted him.

“Oh. Right. Off we go, then. How come Thor gets to stay?”

“Because I said so,” Natasha said. “Don’t fuck around right now, Tony. Just go.”

He realized what she was telling him and turned toward the door without another word. Steve and Bruce followed him.

“JARVIS, are the cameras in here back on?” Natasha asked.

“All cameras are operational again.”

“Shut the ones in here off,” she said. “And notify us if anyone comes back on this hall.”

“Of course.”

Natasha ran her hand over Clint’s face again. “It’s all right. Cameras are off. Everyone’s gone except me and Thor. No one’s going to see it except the two of us.”

He arched up and locked his arms around her, and the shaking took over his whole body until he could barely hold onto her. He felt Thor against his back, another set of strong arms around him, and let himself crumble into their grip, too overwhelmed to think. He didn’t want to hear words and neither of them spoke any, but hands were stroking his hair, resting against the back of his neck, holding onto his arms to keep him where he was, safe between them as the confusion and panic and pain unwound and coursed through him and took him apart.

Eventually he realized his breathing was starting to even out, and that the shaking had subsided enough that he could at least tell his hands what to do. His forehead was resting against Natasha’s shoulder and her hands were running through his hair, avoiding the line of stitches. He realized Thor’s hands had a firm but gentle grip on his shoulders, steadying him, and that he could feel Thor’s breath against the back of his neck.

“Okay,” he murmured.

“You’re all right,” Natasha whispered. “I understand. You know I do.”

“He’s really here, isn’t he?”

“Yeah. We got the word from Fury that he managed to slip out of Asgard…”

“And heads will roll when I find out who allowed it,” Thor muttered. “I can’t… I was the one who allowed you to leave with him and didn’t even wake up to stop it…”

“I’m sure he did something to keep you from waking up,” Natasha said.

“Even if you had, you’d have let me go with him,” Clint said.

Natasha frowned. “Why? Who was he pretending to be?”

Clint dropped his eyes. “You.”

She muttered a curse. “Next time I have him in my sights, I _will_ put a bullet in him.”

“That won’t stop him,” Thor said.

“Maybe not, but it’ll hurt like a bitch,” she said. “And there’ll be more than one. There’ll be one for every time he hurt Clint… and yes, you’d better believe I’m keeping score.”

“I get to help,” Clint said, hating the unsteadiness in his voice.

Natasha looked over his shoulder at Thor. “What the hell do we do now that he’s actually here?”

“I don’t know. Would Fury…”

“If Fury finds out Loki’s on this planet and he’s after Clint, he’ll have Clint locked up someplace where they _think_ he can’t get to him,” Natasha said. “And then when he gets to him anyway, we won’t be there. Is there anywhere they could actually put him where he’d be safe from Loki?”

“I doubt it.”

“So do I,” she said. “JARVIS? Get Tony for me, please.”

A moment later, Tony’s voice came through the speakers. “What’s up?”

“Can you program JARVIS to do body scans of all of us? Motion capture scans, things like that? And voice recognition software… not just tone and inflection, but more detailed nuances that would be harder to imitate?”

“You’re thinking if JARVIS has that kind of profile on all of us, he can sound the alarm is somebody isn’t who they look like they are.”

“Exactly.”

“That’s doable. But Loki’s a pretty good imitator. What happens if we get false alarms, or he gets past the scans?”

“Well, just do a really good job, and he won’t.”

“Gee, thanks for the help.”

“You’re the genius. Figure it out.”

“You know… you have access to some of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s software that they use to positively ID their agents. If I could get my hands on that…”

“What, you can’t just hack into it yourself?” she asked.

“I can, but they’ll know it was me… they usually do. You have legitimate access, so the system won’t flag it.”

She sighed. “Fine. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

She waited until the light beside the speaker went off before turning her attention back to Clint, tipping his head back to force him to look her in the eyes.

“Clint? Are you okay staying with Thor?”

“Yeah. I’ll be okay.”

“Thor… get him out of here. One of the guest rooms is fine. And no, Clint, I’m not worried about you hurting yourself. I’m worried about Loki having things to use to hurt you or Thor.”

“I will take him to one of the other rooms…”

“Okay. He can have some water, but nothing to eat for a little while, all right? And if he starts not making sense, or you can’t get him to stay awake, call me right away. I don’t want to give him any serious painkillers right now… they might make it harder to tell if he’s got a serious head injury.”

“Can I at least have some fucking Tylenol?” Clint asked scowling.

“You can,” Natasha said. “And I won’t be gone very long… I’m just going to go log into some things for Tony and I’ll try to be back here with you in an hour or two.”

When Thor picked him up like a small child, Clint considered protesting that he was capable of walking, but he wasn’t entirely sure of that, and Thor didn’t seem to mind, so he closed his eyes and rested his head against the broad shoulder and tried not to think.


	28. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint is shaken, but Thor is more than willing to help him hold it together. Natasha makes more work for Bruce and Tony, then gets an unexpected chance to play. Figured I should add something in the warnings about some minimal het content... if you don't want to read about Natasha kissing people, you've been warned.

Natasha glanced at the clock in the corner of the computer screen.

“Damnit. JARVIS, how long have I been down here?”

“Six hours and twenty-three minutes.”

“Shit,” she muttered. “Tony, get over here.”

Tony appeared from somewhere else in the lab. “What? Did you get the programming I wanted?”

“That took me fifteen minutes,” she said.

“What have you been doing over here? Playing Sim City?”

“Breaking your security systems.”

Tony raised his eyebrows. “Doing what?”

She leaned back in her chair. “Looking for ways to break your security systems.”

“My security systems are top-of-the-line…”

“No, they’re not. And even if they were, this is what I do for a living, Tony.”

“How many ways did you find to break my security systems?”

“Two hundred and eighty. JARVIS, print out a log of all the security breaches I managed to cause and give a copy to Tony and to Bruce.”

“Are you at least going to help us figure out how to fix them?” Tony asked.

“I don’t fix things. I break them. On purpose. Have fun. I coded the chart for you, so you can look them up in order of most likely to be discovered by hackers, most dangerous in terms of access to information or facilities, and most likely for Loki to try to exploit.”

She turned and walked toward the lab doors.

“What’s going on?” Bruce asked.

“Put some coffee on,” Tony said. “Apparently, we have a lot of work to do.  JARVIS, why the hell didn’t you tell me the fucking security systems were full of holes?”

“Because I lack Agent Romanov’s particular skill set.”

“What skill set? Breaking stuff?

“That is a highly simplistic way to…”

“But, basically, breaking stuff.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, get to work on these. Bruce and I…”

“Sir, Agent Romanov and I have already addressed all the security issues that could be managed from within my current programming. The remaining two hundred and eighty are breaches that my current programming has no solution for.”

“Well, fuck me,” Tony muttered.

Bruce glanced at the list on the screen. “JARVIS, how many of these did Natasha consider to be an immediate danger?”

“Agent Romanov and I prepared patches for the most potentially high-risk areas in order to decrease vulnerability…”

Tony crossed his arms and looked over at Bruce. “Did you know she was a fucking computer hacker?”

“Of course she’s a computer hacker. What do you think S.H.I.E.L.D. trains their agents to do, have tea parties? JARVIS, are the systems currently secure?”

“They are secure enough for me to notify the team if they are breached.”

“Okay,” Bruce said.

Tony jumped at the feeling of a hand between his shoulder blades. Bruce shook his head and turned him around and took him by the arms.

“You need to stop for a little while.”

“We’ve got work to do. All this stuff…”

“You heard JARVIS. Natasha’s satisfied that things are patched for the moment. And you know you’re going to do shitty work if you can’t think straight.”

“I’m thinking fine,” he said.

“You’re not. You’re bouncing off the walls and I’m betting you can’t even focus on a computer screen.”

“That’s when I work best.”

“No… that’s when you _think_ you work best, until you come back later and realize everything you did is a complete disaster.”

“Not a _complete_ disaster. There’s usually…”

“Tony, we’re getting out of the lab for a little while.”

“We can’t just…”

“Yes, we can, because everybody needs you at your best and not a brain-fried sleep-deprived zombie. Come on.”

“Where are we going?” Tony asked.

“My room.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re going to rest for a while.”

Tony laughed. “Are you kidding? When I’m this wired I don’t sleep for three or four days.”

“Yeah, but that’s because you can’t get your brain to shut up,” Bruce said, and he was closer than Tony had realized, his hand sliding around him to pull him in. “And I know how to shut it up for you”

“I… oh. But…”

“This is not open for debate, Tony.”

“Okay.”

 

 

 

 

 “Can I go to sleep now?” Clint asked, burying his face in his pillow.

Thor shook his head; Clint could feel his face against his hair.

“I promised Natasha I would keep you awake until she came back. She is concerned about your head and…”

“I know, I know.”

Thor smiled to himself and pulled Clint closer; he hadn’t been able to get more than two words at a time out of him since they reached the guest room, although dragging Thor down on the bed with him and refusing to allow him to let go of him had certainly communicated well enough that he didn’t want him to leave.

“Tony and Bruce got her wrapped up in one of their stupid projects,” Clint muttered.

“Perhaps,” Thor said, tracing the line of Clint’s arm down to his hip and thigh. “It seems easy to lose track of time in Tony’s presence. Perhaps he has some minor time-manipulating abilities…”

“No… he’s just mentally unstable and it’s contagious if you get too close.”

“That’s possible too.”

Clint squirmed and shifted his weight in the protective circle of Thor’s arms. Thor’s hand drifted up to stroke very lightly over the bruises across his face.

“Do you want another cold cloth to put on…”

“No.”

Thor sighed. “Are you unhappy with me, little Hawk?”

Clint glanced over his shoulder, genuinely puzzled. “What? Why?”

“For allowing this to happen. For failing to protect you.”

“You didn’t do this… any of it. And it’s not your job to protect me. I’m supposed to be able to protect myself.”

“I hardly think that it’s fair, my friend, to be angry with yourself for being unable to fight an enemy who carries as unfair an advantage as my brother does in hand to hand combat with a human. If he had any honor or any decency, he would save his powers for someone with the ability to challenge him in return…”

“Yeah. The saying here is ‘pick on somebody your own size’, “ Clint said. “If I’d had some weapons, or at least a chance to…”

“But he made sure you were unarmed. And that you were already injured. Only the most cowardly of opponents would trick you into a fight you could not possibly win… and even more cowardly to make sure that someone else had already damaged you to make sure that he didn’t have to face you at your full strength…”

Clint scowled. “Why would he even care if I was at my full strength, or even if I was armed? He knows I can’t do anything to him. He knows…”

Thor propped himself up on his elbow. “I think he _is_ afraid of you, little Hawk.”

Clint laughed bitterly. “Why?”

“That’s the odd thing. I don’t know. Loki is mad, but he is clever. He’s holding something back. I don’t know what he thinks you have that he wants, but Loki takes what he wants, and he doesn’t waste time doing it… unless there are risks involved.”

“Yeah, the risk of his big brother with a big hammer…”

“I don’t think that’s what he’s afraid of,” Thor said.

“Well, he wasn’t afraid to…” Clint said, and somehow his voice stopped working, and he realized the shaking he’d been trying to control every time his mind went back a few hours had started again. He tried to pull away to keep Thor from noticing, but Thor only tugged him back and stroked his hair.

“Shh. We will not discuss him anymore. There’s no need to. You are safe here… Natasha is working with Tony and Bruce, and Steve is patrolling the building… and my brother will not trick me again. I know his games. If he walks into this room, it makes no difference what disguise he wears… I’ll know him.”

“I don’t want to talk about him,” Clint said sharply.

Thor loosened his grip and drew back. “I’m sorry. I only meant…”

Clint grabbed his arms and tugged them, pulling him back. “Don’t…”

“I thought you were angry with me.”

“No. I just… I don’t want to think about him. It’s all I’ve been able to do for hours. How he just... could do anything he wanted to me. And how there was nothing I could do about it. You know what the stupidest thing is?”

“No, I do not,” Thor said quietly, hearing the unsteadiness in Clint’s voice.

“The stupidest thing is that I told him to stop… and I think there’s actually some idiot part of my brain that thought he actually would. That thought he would listen.”

“That isn’t stupid,” Thor said. “If it had been one of us, we would have.”

“I know. That’s…”

He shifted and pressed himself back against Thor’s body. Thor ran a hand over his chest and spoke into the soft curve of his neck, questioning.

“You don’t want…”

“I want you to give me something else to think about.”

Thor frowned. “Are you sure that’s a good idea? I don’t want to hurt you…”

“Look, you’re going to be gentle with me and even if I’m a little sore it’s not going to hurt as much as getting thrown into a wall by the Hulk and it’s not going to hurt as much as being used as a punching bag by Loki, so…”

“I suppose that’s true… and I will be gentle, but…”

“You’re as bad as Bruce and Tony. I just want…”

“A distraction,” Thor said.

Clint looked over at him and frowned. “What?”

“It’s all right, little Hawk.”

“You don’t want to be just a distraction,” Clint said.

“I will do whatever helps my friend.”

Clint tipped his head back to rest on Thor’s broad shoulder. “Look, you’re not going to tell anyone this. Including Natasha. Right?”

“Of course.”

“If I just wanted to be distracted, I’d just go get into one of Tony’s not-so-secret liquor stashes,” he said. “I need… shit. I can’t…  I don’t just need to be distracted. I need to have… I need to know…”

“What do you need to know?”

“I know, with you…”

“That you have all of the control, and that anything we do, you can stop it with a single word, with no questions asked?”

Clint nodded, not sure if he could trust his voice. Thor smiled.

“I am happy to be that for you, little Hawk. Why don’t you reach over and see if that nightstand is equipped with the usual sort of thing Tony seems to consider essential for all rooms with beds in them?”

He knew perfectly well that after what had happened, he shouldn’t want this, shouldn’t want anyone to touch him, much less to do things like this to him, but it very quickly ceased to matter what he should or should not want. He had Thor’s sturdy arm across his chest to hold onto while Thor’s other hand was occupied with very patiently sliding slicked fingers into him, twisting them slowly to loosen him and ease the soreness and eventually to find that place that had Clint’s back arching and his fingers digging into Thor’s arm and his eyes closed so that he could lose himself in the feeling.

“You are mine,” Thor murmured.

“I think… you’ll have to share…” Clint managed to get out.

“I am pleased to share. I want my friends to care for you as I do... I like to think of you with them. It pleases me to imagine what Bruce and Tony do with you when they have you to themselves…”

Clint couldn’t help but grin. “You think about that?”

“Of course,” Thor said, and Clint exhaled sharply at the feeling of his cock pressing against his ass, suddenly very hard and, if he’d forgotten, unreasonably large.

“You could just watch, you know. JARVIS has video of everything…”

“I would rather you tell me about it,” Thor murmured, sliding in a third finger to join the other two. “I would like you to tell me about it.”

“What… oh, fuck… what do you want to know?”

“Tell me what they do with you. And how it feels. And what they say. Do they take turns with you while the other watches, or do they have you together?”

Clint thought to himself that if Thor kept up with what he was doing, he was going to lose the ability to recall anything or to put coherent sentences together.

“They… Tony listens to Bruce. Tony needs someone to listen to. He doesn’t… know what to do with himself…”

“What did they do last time to make you so sore?”

“They had this… thing…”

Thor chuckled. “Was it purple?”

“Fuck… what? Yes…”

“Mmm-hmm. Bruce didn’t want the purple one, but Natasha is difficult to negotiate with. And they used that on you?”

“Tony… he did… while Bruce gave directions… fuck, I can’t talk if you keep doing that…”

“Ahh, but if you stop talking, I can stop doing this.”

“That’s not fair…”

“No, but it’s enjoyable.”

 

 

 

 

 

Natasha stopped outside the door of the guest room and listened, but Tony had taken the precaution of making sure that any sounds from the bedrooms couldn’t be heard from the halls.

“JARVIS… what are they up to?”

“I have informed them that you have arrived and Thor has instructed me to let you in,” JARVIS said, and Natasha noted that he hadn’t really answered her question, but then the door slid open.

She’d been in strange enough places and seen strange enough things that finding Clint and Thor tangled up in bed together didn’t even register on her face, even with Thor grinning broadly at her over Clint’s shoulder and Clint staring at her blankly with dark, dazed eyes.

“I can leave,” she said.

“It would be more interesting if you stayed for a few minutes,” Thor said, and as she watched he shifted his hips, and Clint gasped and twisted in his grip.

“I don’t…” she started to say.

“It’s not like you’re shy,” Clint interrupted, his voice tight and rough.

“No,” she said thoughtfully. “And I have to say that I haven’t had too many opportunities to see a demigod naked, and I’ll admit it’s a long way from being unpleasant.”

Thor chuckled, and Clint tried to scowl. “Sure. Checking him out… fuck!”

“I can make him stop talking any time you like,” Thor said.

“I’m going to regret this,” she said, walking across the room slowly, giving herself time to take everything in.

Clint looked up to find her standing beside the bed and had to try to assemble enough of a thought to figure out what she was doing there, and realized there wasn’t a good reason that he could think of, but with Thor’s cock where it was, he couldn’t really think at all, so he just blinked at her.

“I’d almost forgotten how good you look like this,” she murmured.

“Like what?”

She reached out and ran her fingers across his face. “Flushed. Breathing hard. Shaking. Eyes all dark, like lead. Heart pounding. Right on that line of pleasure and pain… just ready to fall over the edge…”

Thor rumbled his approval against the back of Clint’s neck, feeling his response to Natasha’s words in the arch of his back and the shiver that ran up his spine.

“You were one of the only ones… who could get me there,” he breathed.

“I know,” she said, tracing his shoulder with her fingers. “But it was really ugly, Clint.”

“I… fuck. I can’t…”

“Shh,” she said, letting her fingers slide down over the exposed skin of his stomach. She glanced at Thor, who nodded approvingly, and then leaned down and pressed her lips lightly to Clint’s bruised ones. He jerked, surprised, and his hands moved toward her, but she pulled back.

“No touching. Thor…”

Thor easily hooked an arm over both of Clint’s, pinning his hands down. She leaned in to kiss him again, and this time there was nothing he could do except moan against her lips. Thor picked up his pace, rocking Clint’s body, and with each thrust she could feel the breath escape him, feel him tremble under her fingers, feel him twist and start to whisper desperate pleading words against her mouth.

“Do you want…” Thor asked.

She met his eyes and shook her head. He nodded, and the hand that had been pinning Clint’s arms slid down to wrap around his cock. Clint whined, and his freed hands flew up and buried themselves in Natasha’s hair and pulled her in, kissed her hard for a moment, and then his head rolled back against Thor’s shoulder and his hands gripped at the sheets.

“Fuck… Tasha…”

Clint hadn’t called her that in years and she didn’t know if he even knew he’d called her that now, until he caught his breath and opened his eyes and looked up at her.

“I think you’re supposed to shout the name of the person who’s actually fucking you,” she said, glancing at Thor, who just chuckled.

“I didn’t…”

She stroked his hair. “It’s all right. I’m the one who kissed you.”

“Tasha…” he murmured, his hand finding her face and fingers running over her cheek.

“This doesn’t mean we’re going back to…”

He smiled. “I know. We weren’t good together, were we?”

“If by ‘not good together’ you mean that one of us, most likely you, was going to end up dead, I’d say that’s pretty accurate.”

“Still love you,” he said, his head slumping against the pillow.

“I know,” she said. “Still love you, too.”

“Really? Is that why you want to kill anyone who fucks with me?”

“Don’t ruin the moment, asshole.”

“Too late. That’s what I do best.”

Thor laughed and rubbed Clint’s head affectionately. “You have many other talents.”

Natasha sat up. “Hell. I forgot I came up here to make sure you had the antibiotics for that head wound… since you’re not exactly keeping it spotlessly clean and sterile… and you could probably still use some pain meds.”

“Probably. I don’t seem to be doing anything to help these ribs heal any faster.”

“If you were resting up and giving yourself time to recover, I’d know something was seriously wrong with you,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

 

 

 

 

 

It wasn’t until she was gone that Clint rolled over and gave Thor a curious look.

“Did you plan that?”

“Plan what?”

“Don’t play the dumb blond with me. Did you plan that?”

Thor grinned. “Perhaps I had it in the back of my mind…”

“And had JARVIS let you know when she was leaving the lab, didn’t you.”

“Possibly.”

“Asshole.”

Thor chuckled. “I’m sorry. I will make sure not to arrange for beautiful women who are in love with you to participate in our encounters in the future.”

Clint raised his eyebrows. “Hang on, now… I didn’t say that.”

“Oh? It sounded like you were complaining.”

“Not complaining.”

“Are you sure? Because you did call me an asshole…”

“That’s a term of endearment.”

“I’m fairly certain most people don’t consider it a term of endearment,” Thor said, grinning.

“I do, asshole,” Clint said, and kissed him.


	29. Chapter 29

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint has had enough of hiding from the memory of what happened while he was under Loki's control, and he knows there's a way to get those memories back... it just happens to be a really bad way.

_You have something I want, little Hawk, and I will have it. And once I have it, I will be quite happy to kill you in whatever painful way will distress my brother the most. But not until then._

_Loki is mad, but he is clever. He’s holding something back. I don’t know what he thinks you have that he wants, but Loki takes what he wants, and he doesn’t waste time doing it… unless there are risks involved._

Clint woke abruptly, the words from the day before echoing in his head and the ragged edges of a nightmare floating at the edges of his awareness.

“Are you all right, little Hawk?” Thor asked.

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

“How is your head?”

“Not as bad as I’d have thought,” he said, sitting up gingerly.

“Other parts of you are a bit more sore?” he asked, smirking.

“Can’t imagine why,” Clint said. “I’m sure you didn’t have anything to do with it.”

Thor yawned. “I wonder what the kitchen has available for breakfast.”

Clint’s mind flashed back to the words that had been echoing across his sleeping brain. “I want a shower first. And I want some clean clothes. I’ll just run down to my room and grab them…”

“I’ll go with you.”

“Oh, come on. How much trouble can I get in? The door’s smashed down.”

“Still, I should…”

JARVIS interrupted him. “Agent Romanov is at the door. Shall I let her in?”

“Ask her what the magic word is,” Clint said.

“According to her, the magic word is something that according to my programming translates from Russian as an insult regarding the size of your male anatomy.”

“That’ll work,” he said, shrugging.

Natasha was all business this morning, wearing her official S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform, although without the usual assorted weaponry. She handed Clint a cup of pills and a bottle of water.

“What are you all official for?”

“Fury wants me on a conference call in half an hour,” she said. “And he wants you, too, Thor. He wanted Clint, too, but I told him that if we were going to be talking about Loki and what he was doing in this world again, we might want to keep you out of it to avoid you deciding to take things into your own hands and do something stupid.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that you didn’t need any more excuses to take things into your own hands and do something stupid,” she said. “He asked what you already knew, and I told him we hadn’t told you anything because we didn’t want you going on a wild Loki-chase until we had reason to believe he was actually targeting you.”

“But he is targeting…” Thor said.

“Yeah, but it’s really better if S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t know that right now. I don’t think Fury would put Clint at risk by using him to bait Loki, but I can’t swear he wouldn’t…”

“This has nothing to do with you wanting to make sure that you get to do the dispensing of justice this time, does it?” Clint asked.

She glanced at Thor before speaking. “Fury and the Asgardians had their chance to play nice with him, and it didn’t work. This time, it’s going to be _my_ version of justice, and I don’t know what passes for justice in Asgard, but I can tell you that in Russia, it’s a very, very loose term and usually involves a lot of violence.”

Thor sighed. “I don’t like to think of my brother being harmed, but…”

Natasha gave him a level stare. “He hurt Clint. And then he came back here to hurt him again. I _will_ hurt him and I _will_ make him pay for it, and I _will_ do it my way, and you will not interfere, and neither will Fury or anyone else. This is personal, you understand? He’s going to pay for this. I am going to make him pay for this. Personally.”

Clint glanced at Thor. “I know he’s your brother, but I’m speaking as the voice of experience here… she doesn’t take many things personally, but when the Black Widow says it’s personal, she means it.”

“You’d better get up and put on something decent, Thor. Fury wants us both on the line and it’s a video call,” Natasha said.

“Can I get a shower and then go down to the lab? I’m sure Bruce and Tony are there.”

“Steve’s on his way over here. I don’t need you in the lab today… those two have enough trouble keeping it in their pants when it’s just the two of them and they’re not going to get shit done if you show up.”

Clint shrugged; she had a point. Besides, Thor or Natasha might let him go to his room to get a change of clothes, but they’d both keep a very close eye on whatever he tried to take with him, and even Bruce or Tony would be suspicious enough to notice if he was up to something, but Steve didn’t know him as well as they did.

Thor had departed to find some clothes when Steve arrived.

“Good morning.”

“Our call with Fury is in ten minutes and I have to go set up the equipment,” Natasha said. “If he wants to go get a shower, that’s fine, but don’t go anywhere. JARVIS will have a camera on him in case anything weird happens.”

“I want clean clothes from my room,” Clint insisted.

“Fine. Take him down to his room and let him grab some clothes. Notice, Clint, that I said ‘clothes’ and not ‘weapons’.”

“No weapons. Promise.”

“Okay… if you try anything stupid, you’ll deal with me when I get back.”

“I think Captain America can probably handle a mildly-concussed, half-drugged, unarmed regular human without too much trouble.”

Natasha shot him a look. “He has authorization to hurt you if you do anything stupid.”

“I do?” Steve asked.

“You do now,” she said. “I just authorized it. I’m his handler. If he does anything stupid, you have my orders to kick his ass.”

Steve raised his eyebrows and glanced at Clint. “Umm… yes, ma’am. I’m sure we won’t have any trouble. You want to go down to your room and grab your clothes?”

“Sounds good.”

 

 

 

“What are you rummaging around in there for?” Steve asked, starting to sound suspicious.

Clint kept digging in his closet, cursing under his breath as he poked himself on another arrow and contemplated that maybe they should be kept somewhere other than in the closet.

“I’m looking for my belt.”

“You’ve got clothes. Do you really need a belt?”

“Only if I want my pants to stay up,” Clint said, as his hand closed around something narrow and smooth and rectangular. He pulled it out quickly and slid the small black box into the t-shirt he had tucked under his arm, then grabbed a belt and popped up, holding up his hands.

“There. See? Shirt, belt. Pants and boxers on the dresser. That’s it. We good?”

Steve studied him, but the way the T-shirt was bundled up, there was no way it could be concealing a bow or arrows or any weapon of any size.

“All right. Natasha wants you using the shower in the guest room, though. She’s worried Loki’s too familiar with this territory.”

“No problem,” Clint said agreeably. “There’s soap and stuff in there. I’m ready if you are.”

Steve didn’t say anything about him taking his clothes into the bathroom, and he knew where the cameras were, so he kept his back to them as he quickly pulled out the black box and slid it open. He studied the small syringe full of clear liquid, unmarked and with a plastic cap over the needle, before palming it in his hand and stepping into the shower, grabbing his belt on the way. He waited to hear if JARVIS would sound the alarm, either about the syringe or the belt, but apparently the AI hadn’t spotted the former and wasn’t programmed to be concerned about the latter, or at least not until he tried to do something dangerous with it.

With the water running hot to keep Steve happy outside the door and hopefully cloud the cameras’ vision slightly, he yanked the belt tight around his upper arm and pulled the knot with his teeth as he pulled the plastic cap off the syringe. He knew he had to be quick now, because JARVIS was definitely going to notice what he was up to, and it wasn’t like he’d ever been someone who habitually injected things, but this had been part of his training, although no one had specified what he might have to be injecting into someone or why. Apparently it was something they thought field agents needed to know.

The doctors at S.H.I.E.L.D. had always told him when they worked on him that he had great veins.

“Agent Barton,” JARVIS said.

Clint ignored him and focused on the needle point. He could hear JARVIS calling for Steve and for immediate intervention. Fuck.

On the second attempt, blood flowed back into the syringe, clouding the clear liquid, and he tried to keep his hand steady even as he heard the bathroom door open and heard Steve coming toward the shower, but then his vision started to blur, and he looked down at the now-empty syringe as his fingers uncurled and let it fall to the floor. He fumbled for the belt around his arm, tugged at it, and felt it loosen as the stuff burned up into his shoulder and then spread across his chest and then hit his brain, and he felt his back sliding down the wet tile and heard Steve shouting, but nothing else.

 

 

 

Natasha tried to look down at her cell phone without Fury noticing, swearing that if it was another question from Tony about the security systems, she was going to hit him with something heavy.

“Is there a problem, Agent Romanov?” Fury asked, his face on the screen turning toward her.

“Yes. This tower is full of idiots,” she said.

The message was from Tony. But all it said was “BAD THINGS CLINT HELP ASAP LIKE NOW”.

“Agent Romanov?”

“I’m sorry. I told you Tony and Bruce are working on the security systems and apparently I’m their official consultant.”

“Did you tell them you were in a meeting?”

“Since when does Tony Stark give a flying fuck what anybody else is doing if he wants something?” she asked.

“Point taken,” Fury said. “I’ve spoken to the Asgardians about Loki and they’re pretty embarrassed that he managed to sneak out, but they don’t know what he’s up to… he’s been stripped of most of his destructive powers but apparently there are aspects of his abilities that are inherent to his nature and can’t be taken away… like the shape-shifting. So…”

Natasha had flashed a text back to Tony, and apparently he had gotten it, because suddenly Fury’s voice started to cut in and out.

“We’re losing you,” she said.

“Fucking… technology… Stark fucking Towers…”

“Don’t bitch at me. Bitch at Tony.”

“Can’t… what? Tell… get this… fixed… goddamn shit…”

The screen went blank and Natasha was out of her seat and running. Thor didn’t even ask; there was only one thing he knew of that would have her that panicked and if she was in enough of a hurry to shut Fury down in the middle of a meeting, there probably wasn’t time to ask questions.

 

 

 

 

They burst into the room to find Clint sprawled on the floor, soaked and unresponsive despite Steve shaking him.

“What the hell happened?” Natasha demanded.

Tony stood up and held out a wet belt in one hand and an empty syringe in the other. “He must have had this in his room, I guess. I don’t know what it is…”

“Oh, fuck. Damnit, Clint… take that to the lab and see if you can find out what was in it. Check the S.H.I.E.L.D. databases. That’s not a regular hospital syringe… that’s S.H.I.E.L.D. –issued for field use.”

“On it. Bruce?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you do before you had Bruce?” Natasha asked.

“I had robots. They were easier to deal with but not much good for conversation. I’ll have mass spectrometer results on this in five or ten minutes.”

She kneeled on the carpet and pressed her fingers under Clint’s jaw. “He’s warm, even for being wet. And his pulse is fast. But a stimulant shouldn’t put him unconscious. Clint…”

“I haven’t been able to get a response out of him,” Steve said.

“Sit him up.”

Steve obediently propped Clint up, and as soon as he did, Natasha slapped him hard across the face, the sound cracking through the room. Clint jerked his head and his eyes drifted open, blank and clouded.

“What did you do?” she demanded.

“Getting… answers.”

“Clint, what did you do?”

He muttered something she couldn’t understand.

“What did you say?”

“Total… ex…”

“That’s not fucking helpful,” she snapped, but his head had fallen back and he was out again, and she suspected there wasn’t much point in slapping him again.

“Total what?” Steve asked.

She shook her head. “I have no idea. Total…”

Her hands fell to her sides and her eyes widened. Thor touched her shoulder.

“Natasha?”

“Please tell me he wasn’t trying to say, ‘total exposure’.”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“It’s… shit. I’m not… he wouldn’t have done that. He couldn’t even have _had_ that stuff. S.H.I.E.L.D. pulled authorization on it even for interrogations.”

“What is ‘total exposure’?” Steve asked.

“It’s what the agents called a drug that S.H.I.E.L.D. and a bunch of other agencies were testing a while back as a possible truth serum… you know, for interrogations. They call it ‘total exposure’ because the subject has no control over what the shit forces them to remember, including things they’d forgotten or tried to forget or things they really, really didn’t want to remember… there’s no part of your memory that it won’t rip open and strip naked. It was abandoned as an interrogation tool because the subjects don’t stay conscious or mentally coherent and you can’t control what memories they’ll access, so you can’t really get any useful information out of them, and the psychological and physical side effects are… bad. Really, really bad, depending on the subject.”

“You know a lot about this,” Steve said, raising his eyebrows.

She lowered her head.

“They tested this on you,” Thor said.

She nodded. “A long time ago. I was still with the Red Room in Russia and they needed test subjects, and they didn’t ask… they just pulled you in and shot you up with it and then tried to get classified information out of you.”

“That’s…”

JARVIS interrupted. “Agent Romanov, Mr. Stark has found a match for the chemical composition of the residue in the syringe. It is identical to a substance labeled in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s database as Serum ME-97-R.”

“Fuck,” she murmured. “Clint, are you out of your fucking mind? Where the hell…”

“Is that what you were talking about?”

“Yeah. It is. I don’t know where he got it, but Clint’s always been good at managing to slip things out of S.H.I.E.L.D. inventory that he thinks might be useful.”

“What’s it going to do to him?”

“About six to eight hours of a horrendous tour through everything in your brain you never wanted to see again, along with every other random thing that’s in there. The primary neurological effect wears off at around six to eight hours, but then you get about 48 hours of seizures, irrational thinking, nausea, hallucinations, and incredibly unpleasant overstimulation of your sensory nervous system. It’s… I can’t even tell you. It’s like everything that touches you is made of fire, and every sound is like someone blasting a horn straight into your brain…”

Thor laid a hand on her shoulder and could feel her shaking under his touch.

“You remember this vividly,” he said.

“You never forget it,” she whispered.

“What can we do for Clint?”

“Right now, he’s gone. He will be for hours. If you catch them as the neurological effects are wearing off, sometimes you can get some useful information. But he’s going to need to be somewhere where we can secure him and put an IV in him and isolate him from as much sensory stimulation as possible…”

“Agent Romanov,” JARVIS said, “Mr. Stark’s lab possesses a sound-dampening isolation room intended for the testing of highly sensitive audio equipment. Would you like me to notify him that it will be needed?”

“Yes. And we need a bed in there. And it needs to be a bed we can secure restraints to. And tell Bruce to get together the stuff for an IV… and Ativan and morphine. If we don’t have a decent amount here, tell him to have Tony get some. We’re going to need to manage him for most of 48 hours when he comes out of this and I want it… I want to make it as easy on him as we can. Easier than they made it on me, at least.”

“I will tell them immediately.”

Thor frowned. “Natasha… would Clint know exactly what this would do to him?”

“Yeah. He would know. We all read about the tests. I told him… some of it.”

“Then he must think that he will be able to learn something with this that he feels he needs to know,” he said. “He told me there are things about when my brother had him that he doesn’t remember…”

“He’s going to remember them now,” she said.

“I think that’s what he’s trying to do.”

“Why…”

“To find out why Loki is here, and what he wants.”

“It’s not worth it. This is… you don’t understand how bad this stuff is.”

“Perhaps not knowing was worse,” Thor said.

She tried to slow her breathing, to think logically. “Okay. JARVIS, what did Tony say?”

“He says that all of the requested materials will be set up within fifteen minutes, but that he does not have any restraints in the lab.”

“I’ll handle that,” Thor said. “Can Captain Rogers assist you with taking him to the lab?”

Steve nodded. “I can do that.”

“Okay,” Natasha said, forcing her head back to where it needed to be, and away from her own memories and the fear. “Let’s go, then.”


	30. Chapter 30

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint finds some possible answers, along with some things he really, really didn't want to find. And even Natasha has limits, and if anyone's going to push her over them, who else would it be?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep this and my other stories and my personal journal on LiveJournal, and I'm RubyElf there too, so if any of you are LJ users, I'd be delighted if you stopped by so we could talk!

The part of Clint’s brain that still vaguely remembered what he was supposed to be doing registered annoyance at the cascade of fragmented childhood and adolescent memories that overwhelmed his thoughts. Admittedly, he had done his best not to spend a lot of time thinking about his father’s unpredictable drunken beatings, but he had managed to lose the memories of his mother standing by in silence, her eyes empty as she watched it, and he didn’t particularly want those back. He didn’t care about the flood of memories of the circus, random and disjointed; he had been so focused on learning everything he could that he hadn’t paid attention to much else. His mind did manage to drag up a tangled mess of adolescent frustrations and hopeful but doomed approaches toward girls; the older women kept an eye on the younger ones and weren’t going to let them get into trouble with the old, washed-up, drunk archer’s so-called prodigy. He didn’t want to see his brother’s angry, disappointed face staring at him, but he’d never been able to forget that anyway.

Fragments of missions, some of them ugly, but Clint had never avoided thinking about the ugly nature of what he did. He didn’t dwell on it, but he didn’t think his brain had too many surprises in store for him there. He was wrong, at least about the details. The details of how much blood spilled across a floor. The details of exactly what every tool and weapon ever used to try to get information out of him or just beat him up had felt like, their imprint on his skin, the sound they made when they hit him. He didn’t want this, but he couldn’t really be surprised that some part of him had registered all of it. The faces of the people were blurry, unclear; they hadn’t mattered. All that had mattered was the pain and the things administering the pain. He didn’t even remember, with half of them, why he was being interrogated, what he was being asked, or even where he was.

With no sense of time he had no idea how long it had been since he started this tour, but it seemed as though the fog was lifting slightly, giving him the ability to reach out for some fragments as they drifted by. He grabbed for one and was startled to find a muddy, drunken memory of a night in a hotel room somewhere in Russia, waiting for the extraction team to find them and pull them out, and reaching for Natasha; it wasn’t unusual then for the adrenaline and the relief to pull their bodies together, but on this night he’d already had more to drink than he needed, and she pushed him gently back down to the bed, shaking her head. He didn’t know what he’d said, but for the first time he remembered her answer.

“No, Clint. You’re looking for someone to break you, and it won’t be me.”

“You’re good at breaking people.”

“I won’t break someone I love,” she’d said.

“Even if I want you too?”

“Especially if you want me to.”

There was a long line of memories behind that one, but Clint tried to steer them away. He didn’t need to remember all of that.

“A binary star system,” Natasha said.

“What… me and you?”

“Pulled together by each other’s gravity. Pulled apart by their own momentum.”

“What happens if they run out of momentum and gravity wins?”

“One of them dies. The other one consumes it.”

“That’s all right with me,” he’d said.

“It’s not all right with me, Clint.”

“You afraid you’ll be the one that doesn’t make it?”

“No. I’m afraid I’ll be the one that does.”

 

 

 

 

The team had pulled chairs from around the lab and stationed them around the door of the sound-isolated testing room off in one of the more isolated corners. Tony and Bruce had a laptop on a desk and were lost in a discussion of chemical formulas, but the others were silent, waiting. The food that Thor had retrieved from the refrigerator and brought down for them to eat sat largely untouched, partly because Thor had yet to learn the technique of microwaving food in order to cause it to be warm before eating it, but partly because no one felt like eating.

“How long has it been since he dosed himself?” Natasha asked.

Steve glanced at the clock. “Going on five hours?”

“Should someone be in there with him?” Tony asked, glancing at the screen above his head that showed the inside of the isolation room, which was empty except for a table on one side of the room and a metal-framed bed on the other. The figure in the bed hadn’t moved since they put him there, although he didn’t have much room to, since he was secured with leather straps tied to the bed frame. Thor had insisted that there be something soft under the straps, since he hadn’t originally selected them for comfort, and Bruce had searched the lab and found some strips of soft foam padding that Tony used to line the more bruise-prone parts of the suit. The table was laid out with vials and syringes, but at the moment the IV in his arm was only dripping saline.

“When do you want us to start the drugs?” Bruce asked.

“When he starts to come out of it,” Natasha said. “He’s the one who thought he needed to do this and go rummaging around in his own head and subject himself to everything that goes with it. If we start drugging him now, he may miss the part of the neurological effects when he’s most likely to be able to achieve some degree of conscious recall, so I’m not going to waste that chance.”

Thor nodded. “If something of use can come of this, there is no reason to waste it. The danger from my brother is real… even if we can keep Clint safe in this tower, there’s no way to know that we can keep him safe in a battle.”

“I’m going to go in at about five and a half hours,” Natasha said. “That’s the point where you can get some of them semi-conscious and talking for a few minutes at a time, although he won’t be very coherent.”

“You said six to eight hours before this part wears off and the side effects start?” Tony asked.

She nodded. “The Russians did the most thorough testing… actually, they might still be using the stuff, as far as I know… but they tested it on hundreds of people. I don’t think they found it to be of any use as a truth serum, but it works well as pointless torture for political dissidents and other troublemakers who might raise a fuss if you beat the shit out of them like a normal prisoner. The fear of being subjected to this again… or being subjected to torture while still dealing with the side effects of this… is more than enough to shut most people up.”

“And Clint hides it in his own closet and injects it into himself,” Bruce said, shaking his head.

“Clint’s special,” she said, sighing. “Anyway, the Russian tests showed that how long they’ll stay down in this phase depends pretty strongly on body size and metabolism. Smaller and lighter-built people and ones with a slower metabolism stay down longer. With the kind of physical shape Clint is in, his metabolism should put it closer to the six-hour mark than the eight. That’s part of the reason this stuff is no good as an interrogation tool… the window in which you can actually interrogate the person is pretty narrow and it’s easy to miss because the drug’s effect is variable. Not to mention that even if you can wake them up enough to question them, there’s no guarantee it’s going to be useful.”

“You’re going to try, though?” Bruce asked.

She shrugged, but the motion was tight and controlled. “Until we know what Loki wants from Clint, and why he wants it badly enough to risk being recaptured to show up here and get it, we won’t know what we’re dealing with. And there’s two people who know what that is… Loki and Clint.”

“You think Clint knows?”

“If everything that happened while Loki had him wasn’t in his head somewhere, he wouldn’t have spent so much time trying to avoid it. He didn’t want to think about it… any of it. I know he knows about what Loki made him do, because I know Fury and the psych guys went over all of it with him… all the parts they knew about. What he hasn’t wanted to remember is whatever happened that was just between him and Loki… and whatever Loki’s up to, I have a feeling it’s got something to do with that.”

Bruce stood up. “It won’t mess things up if I go in and check his pulse and everything again, will it? Because, you know, since everyone here is determined to pretend that I’m a medical doctor even though I keep telling you I’m not…”

“Didn’t S.H.I.E.L.D. find you hiding out in Calcutta playing medical doctor?” Tony asked.

Bruce scowled. “Never mind.”

He opened the door to the small room and slipped inside. Natasha looked up at the screen, watching him check Clint over, sort through the supplies on the table again to make sure they were in the right order and ready to go, and then take a last look at Clint.

The door opened again and he looked directly at Natasha, wide-eyed.

“I think you might want to go in there and talk to him.”

She frowned. “Is he all right? Is he waking up?”

“I think he’s still out. But I opened his eyes to check his pupils…”

“And?”

“His eyes are blue. Like, solid blue. Like, Loki blue.”

“That can’t… Loki can’t be messing with him right now,” Tony said. “JARVIS has every sensor in this lab turned up to maximum sensitivity.”

“It’s not Loki,” Natasha said. “It’s Clint.”

 

 

 

He had forgotten, had made himself forget, how terrifyingly small and helpless he had felt, shoved into a neglected corner of his own head while Loki ran rampant with the rest of it. Now he could only watch with agonizing clarity as his brain and body betrayed him, betrayed everything he worked for and everything he was supposed to protect. This wasn’t the part he needed to remember; he knew what he had done under Loki’s command. It was the places where there were gaps in his memory, the places where the nightmares came from but refused to show themselves, the places his mind knew he shouldn’t know about, not if he wanted to stay sane.

Suddenly he was in the dimly lit underground room again, stepping out of a frigid shower and finding Loki’s eyes on him. He remembered this. He remembered all of it, the way his brain followed the orders even as some deeper instinct in his gut tried to resist them. He remembered it clearly right up until the point where Loki’s hands came to rest on his bare skin. He had assumed he had a reasonably good idea what happened from there and he hadn’t wanted to think about it anymore.

He had been wrong.

Now he felt Loki’s hands on him again, and this time the ruthless progression of memory wouldn’t kindly cut to black for him. He saw his palms spread out on the table, felt the resistance and the physical instinct to protect himself rise and tighten in his chest, and then felt it snap through his head. His hands clenched into fists and he jerked away from Loki’s touch and staggered backward. Loki watched him with his eyebrows arched, his pale face registering mild puzzlement.

“I gave you an order, Hawk.”

“I’m not letting you touch me,” he hissed, his head pounding as Loki’s control warred with his own self-awareness. “That’s not… you can’t order that.”

“I can, and I did,” Loki said. “I want you to belong to me, and I will take you, and I will take you willingly, and you will beg me for more of what I give you.”

“Fuck you,” Clint muttered, even as control of his legs was pulled from him and he sank to his knees. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them Loki was standing over him, looking down, and he was shaking his head.

“Why must you be so much more stubborn than the others?”

“You’re not trying to fuck the others.”

Loki seemed to consider this for a moment. “Perhaps you have a point, little Hawk. I suppose one would expect that certain walls would be harder to break than others. But don’t think, you insignificant creature, that I will hesitate to break _all_ of your walls.”

“Do what you have to do.”

Loki raised his staff, and the luminous blue glow bathed the room in strange shadows, growing brighter and brighter as he held it aloft.

“It draws its power from the Tesseract,” Loki said. “There is no limit to how much I can draw upon to break you. Shall we see how much is needed?”

“What do you want?” Clint forced his mouth to form words.

“You.”

“You’re stronger than me. Just shove me on the floor and fuck me and get it over with.”

“Oh, no. I don’t just want your body, Hawk. I want your submission. Your willing submission.”

“You’re not fucking getting it.”

“We’ll see,” Loki said.

The staff touched his chest again, and he felt the power of it pulse and race through him, but this time Loki held it there, letting the pulse build into an overwhelming wave that crashed over him, that felt like it had to be tearing him apart. When it finally stopped, though, he opened his eyes and, through a blue-lit haze, realized that his body, sprawled on the cold floor, seemed to be intact.

“Are we in a more agreeable mood now?” Loki asked.

“Don’t touch me,” Clint muttered.

Loki scowled. “You force me to waste energy that could be better used for other things. I am displeased. But now I must teach you a proper lesson… a lesson in when to surrender.”

The staff touched him again, and this time the flash of blinding blue was painful enough to send him spinning toward the edge of blackness as it burned through his fingertips, his toes, his eyes and ears and lips, into his stomach, into his heart. When consciousness started to settle back in, Loki was leaning over him, and he realized his body was obeying commands that weren’t coming from his own brain anymore.

“I knew you would be willing, if properly persuaded,” Loki said, and his hands were pressing Clint’s legs apart, sliding over his skin.

 _Not willing_ , he thought, but he could not make his mouth say the words. _Not persuaded. Not giving this to you, fucking bastard. You can break me but nobody will ever say I willingly gave you a fucking thing._

He didn’t give it willingly, but Loki took it from him without a fight. There was no fight left, not with his body lost in a strange blue fog, his own limbs feeling as though they belonged to someone else, his mind hazy and hollow.

 _That’s a hell of a lot of energy you wasted,_ he thought, _just so you could put me on the floor and fuck me while I couldn’t lift a finger. Just proves how stupid you are. Wasting resources. Lousy strategy._

Finally, Loki stood and snapped his fingers, and Clint felt sensation rushing back, and with it the sharp pain and the deeper ache low in his body that he refused to think about.

“Get up, little Hawk. And next time I give you an order, keep in mind that I have invested considerable energy in you, and I need only say the word to let it take control of you again.”

“That depends…” he said, trying to keep his voice steady, “on whether you plan to fucking touch me again.”

“I plan to do whatever I please with you.”

“Then you’d better plan on having your magic blue stick around when you do.”

“I don’t need it, fool. You think you can undo what I’ve put into you? I own your mind. And now I own your body. It is mine, at a word, at a glance, and you can hate me as much as you want, but when I activate that control, you will follow my orders, and you will enjoy it.”

He was right about the first part. Clint’s body almost vibrated with the energy forced into it, and Loki could move a finger and make him do his bidding. He was wrong, though, about the second part; nothing on this world or any other could silence the part of him that was still alive, still aware, and still hated every single second of it.

 

 

 

“Breathe,” Natasha said.

He looked at her and tried to decide if this was another memory, but her face was blurrier than the memories had been, and he hadn’t been aware of the straps securing him to the bed before, or of the unfamiliar room with the padded walls.

“What…”

“You know what you did,” she said.

He winced. “Why are you shouting?”

“I’m not. And it’s going to get a lot worse, Clint. You know that.”

“I remember…”

She sighed and touched his face gently. “I know. You were talking. I’m sorry. I wish I could have stopped him… and I’m going to make him wish he’d never laid a finger on you.”

He arched up against the straps, and even with the padding it felt like they were slicing through his skin. “Fuck. It hurts… the lights hurt…”

“I know,” she said, and he vaguely saw her motioning toward the door. The sound of it opening and closing rocketed through his head and sent his body arching against the bed in pain, and Bruce’s footsteps seemed to stab into his eardrums. His stomach lurched and tightened. The sound of the words between them was too much pain to even form coherent thoughts, but through the blinding glare he saw Bruce picking up syringes.

“Make it stop…” he tried to say, but moving the muscles required to speak sent burning electric hurt shooting across his face and lips.

“Trying,” she said. “Breathe. Just breathe.”

He could see out of the corner of his eye Bruce injecting something into the IV line, and he tried to hold out and wait for it to start working, but the pain only seemed to intensify, and now he could see dark, shadowy figures filing into the room, lining up, watching him with empty faces, whispering to themselves.

“Make them go away…”

Natasha glanced at Bruce. “He’s hallucinating.”

“I gave him…”

“Give him more.”

“I don’t want to…”

“I said, give him more.”

She watched his face intently, until finally his jaw started to unclench and his eyes flickered open, his pupils closed down to small black pinpoints in a dazed expanse of gray. She raised her hand and motioned for Bruce to stop.

“About damn time,” he muttered. “I don’t think it’s safe to give him as much as I did.”

“If I give orders, it’s my fault if I’m wrong, not yours,” she said, sitting down carefully on the side of the bed. “Clint? You with me?”

Her voice was soft, and he turned his head gingerly to face her. “Tasha.”

“Yeah.”

“What’d you do?”

“Shot you up with a bunch of drugs.”

“Oh,” he murmured, looking up at the ceiling. “I feel lousy.”

“You’re going to. For at least a day or two. That stuff you took is really bad for you, and you know it. And you did it anyway.”

He blinked at her. “Had to.”

“No, you didn’t. We would have found another way. You just have to do things your way because you’re an asshole.”

“That could be it too. Why am I tied up?”

“Because when you have a seizure or start hallucinating and think we’re trying to kill you, I don’t want to deal with you ripping your IV out or hurting yourself.”

“Oh.”

“I think we have some idea what Loki’s after, although I’m going to have to talk to Thor and the science boys about how the Tesseract energy works…”

“Yeah,” he said, very quietly.

“That’s what you wanted, Clint. Remember? You’re the one who decided to do this to yourself to find that out.”

“I know.”

She heard something in his voice on the edge of breaking, and laid a hand lightly on his shoulder.

“Was it worth it?”

He turned his face away from her. “No.”

Bruce, leaning against the wall by the table, raised his eyebrows in an expression of concern. Natasha smoothed Clint’s hair gently.

“Look, we’re going to try to keep you comfortable…”

“That’s not going to get rid of a bunch of memories I really, really don’t fucking want,” he muttered.

She jerked her hand back and stood up, and Bruce was surprised by the sudden anger in her voice.

“Then you shouldn’t have gone looking for them, you fucking idiot,” she snapped, and before anyone else could say anything, she was out the door.

Tony and the others still waiting looked up anxiously as she stormed out.

“Is he okay?” Steve asked.

“No. He’s stupid and doesn’t care about anyone but himself and he never will,” she spat out, and stalked toward the lab doors.

Thor sighed and rested his head in his hands. Bruce closed the door to the isolation room behind him, looking puzzled.

“What made her snap?”

“Hell, you were in there,” Tony said.

“He said it wasn’t worth it and now he was stuck with a bunch of memories he didn’t want… and she went off.”

“Of course she did,” Steve said, shaking his head. “What would you expect her to do? We told you they tested this stuff on her.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, well, first of all, nobody was there to hold her hand and dope her up with drugs to make it any easier on her,” he said. “And second of all…”

“She didn’t have a choice,” Thor said. “It was forced on her against her will, and for no purpose other than to see what it would do to her…”

“And then Clint decides he’s going to voluntarily dose himself with it, without bothering to talk to any of us about it or think about what would happen, and now he’s unhappy because he went looking for something and he found it and didn’t like it,” Tony concluded.

“He’s got a head full of morphine and sedatives on top of whatever he gave himself,” Bruce said. “He’s not anywhere close to thinking clearly.”

“No, but I think this hits a little close to home for Natasha,” Steve said.

“Well, go talk to her,” Tony said. “You two are… you know.”

Steve laughed wryly. “You think I know anything about the real Natasha? The only person who gets to see the real Natasha is Clint, as far as I know. I get an act. Maybe it’s not the same act you guys get, but it’s an act. She’s a closed book.”

“She’s a big girl,” Tony said. “It might be smarter just to let her cool down. She knows how to handle herself.”

“Yeah, but this hurt,” Bruce argued. “Didn’t you see her face?”

Thor stood up. “I will go and see if she’s willing to speak to me.”

“She’ll talk to you if she’ll talk to anybody,” Tony said. “She likes you.”

“She likes you too,” Thor said. “She just prefers that you not know it.”

“Good luck,” Bruce said. “You might want to duck when she opens the door.”

“I have a surprisingly sturdy head,” Thor said, tapping it with his knuckles. “Please look after Clint and call us if he seems to be in distress.”

“I think he’s going to be mostly off in opiate land for a little while,” Bruce said. “But we’ll call you if anything changes.”


	31. Chapter 31

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony finds it unfair that Thor is a demigod and also has the power to not piss off Natasha. The team starts to get the idea that Fury knows things... or deliberately doesn't know them. Bruce maintains that Clint is, regardless of his behavior, a keeper.

“Agent Romanov does not want company,” JARVIS said.

Thor looked at the closed door in front of him. “Tell her that if she talks to me, it will at least prevent the others from feeling the need to come and annoy her further.”

“She says you make a valid point,” JARVIS said, and the door opened.

Natasha looked up from where she huddled in a chair by the window overlooking the city. Her eyes were dry, but weariness was written across her features.

“If you’re going to tell me I shouldn’t have…”

“I wasn’t going to tell you anything about what you should or shouldn’t have done,” Thor said. “In truth, I cannot even offer my sympathy, since I have never been subjected to the kind of torture that was inflicted on you…”

“It was all to make me tougher,” she said.

“How tough do you need to be?”

“I should be tough enough not to get upset and say stupid, childish things just because…”

“You had a reason to be upset.”

“I’m not allowed to be upset. I’m not supposed to have feelings, and I’m really not supposed to let feelings ruin my ability to do my job. I’m Clint’s handler…”

Thor crossed his arms. “I don’t approve of that decision.”

She laughed bitterly. “You get to approve or disapprove of Fury’s decisions?”

“I didn’t say he cared if I approved. I just said I don’t approve. You should not have been assigned to be his handler.”

She frowned. “Why not? Look, if you think that I’m not capable of…”

“No… I think that Fury knew exactly what he was doing. He assigned you because he knew no one would watch Clint more closely or understand him better than you do. But he was also exploiting the bond between you…”

“He’s not exploiting it. He’s…”

“I think he is exploiting it. I think he knew that after what Loki did, Clint would be angry and frustrated and would try to push away anyone who tried to help him. He knew that your loyalty to Clint would keep you at his side no matter how hard he tried to push you away… even if he hurt you.”

She shrugged. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“And would Clint stand by you even if you hurt him?”

“That’s not how Clint works,” she said. “He doesn’t handle being hurt well.”

“No, he does not. And yet you expect yourself to take as much hurt as he cares to inflict and to be able to accept it without becoming angry?”

She sighed. “There’s a reason I told him a long time ago that we weren’t good for each other. But if you’re here to convince me that I shouldn’t feel bad about…”

“I’m not here to convince you of anything.”

“Then why are you here?”

“To suggest that you make Bruce responsible for Clint’s care until he is recovered from this drug… and that you not be involved in it.”

She leaned back in her chair and looked up at him. “You think I can’t handle my responsibilities.”

“No. I don’t think this should be your responsibility. And we can try to keep Clint from suffering any more harm than necessary, but the harm it’s doing you…”

“It’s just… bad memories,” she said. “It shouldn’t keep me from doing my job.”

“You know too much about this. You are torn between your care for him, wanting to protect him from his own choices, and your awareness of your duty and the responsibility he bears for his own choices.”

“You’re suggesting that my professional abilities are compromised.”

“I’m suggesting that you step back, Natasha. Just for a day or two. So that when Clint _is_ recovered, and he _does_ need something that only you can give him, you will be well enough to give it to him.”

She sat for a long moment without speaking, her eyes turned toward the window.

“You promise me you’ll take good care of him?”

“Of course. And we will consult with you if we need to.”

“All right,” she said quietly. “You guys do what you need to do with him. I trust you. Just… don’t tell me anything that’s going to make me want to come down there.”

He smiled. “How do you relax, Natasha?”

“I don’t.”

“Perhaps you should spend the next day or two trying. The hot tub will be available and you won’t have to worry about what other people are doing in it…”

She almost chuckled. “Okay. I’ll keep that in mind.”

“Then I will leave you to your rest and stop disturbing you.”

He turned back toward the door and was waiting for it to open when Natasha spoke behind him.

“Thor?”

“Yes?”

“I’m not used to… how I feel about something doesn’t usually matter to anybody.”

“Perhaps you have been too successful in convincing other you do not have feelings.”

“I have my reasons. But… thank you.”

“You are most welcome,” he said, nodding. “You are my friend.”

“I don’t have friends.”

“You do now.”

 

 

 

 

“You convinced her to do _what_?” Tony demanded, when Thor returned to the lab.

“You heard me,” Thor said calmly.

“What the _fuck_ did you do that for?”

“Settle down,” Bruce said. “I’m actually happier if she’s not looking over my shoulder right now. I think I can manage the medication well enough. I’d be more comfortable if he’s conscious, even if he’s uncomfortable, than having him be completely out of it.”

Steve nodded. “And you don’t have to be thinking about what it felt like to have it happen to you the entire time.”

Tony scowled. “We had one person who knew what we’re dealing with and you convinced her to go away.”

“No…” Bruce said. “We had one person who _experienced_ what we’re dealing with, and that doesn’t make her the right person to manage the situation.”

Tony glanced at Thor. “How come he gets to be so much taller than me _and_ somehow apparently be always right?”

“The second part is because he actually uses his brain to consider what might be going on in other people’s brains on a level beyond biochemistry,” Bruce said. “As for the being tall, I think you just got ripped off in that department.”

“So what’s the plan, since Natasha’s not running the show?” Tony asked.

Bruce glanced at Steve, who shrugged.

“This isn’t the kind of situation I’m used to being in charge of.”

“Okay, then. The plan. Tony, JARVIS has a recording of what Clint was saying when Natasha had him talking, right?”

“About Loki and his magic glow stick? Yeah.”

“Okay. Well, S.H.I.E.L.D. had the Tesseract for a while. See what you can find out from their research. Thor, go with him, and tell him everything you know about what kind of power the thing has and what happens to that power when you put it in a human.”

“What do you mean, what happens to it?”

“I mean, when you go and put that much energy into a human body, what happens to it?”

“It was not intended to be used in such a way,” Thor said.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. figured out how to put it into weapons,” Steve said. “Or they were trying to. If it can be stored in a weapon, can it be stored in a human body?”

“You’re thinking that when Natasha knocked Loki out of Clint’s head, she broke Loki’s control over the energy he’d put in him…” Tony said.

“Yeah, but what if Loki had intended to get that energy _back_ when he was finished with Clint, and losing control of Clint means that there’s a bunch of energy that he couldn’t get back?” Bruce asked.

“Wouldn’t the guys at S.H.I.E.L.D. have picked that up, if Clint’s walking around with that kind of energy still in his body?”

“Not if they didn’t look for it,” Bruce said. “All they wanted to know at the time was whether he was still compromised.”

“Why aren’t your sensors picking it up now?” Steve asked.

Tony rubbed his forehead. “Because JARVIS established a baseline on each of us, and he’s set to detect anything outside those baselines. If Clint had it when JARVIS established the baselines, the scanners won’t notice it now, any more than they notice the residual effects of Bruce’s gamma radiation.”

“I’m not buying it,” Bruce said. “Fury let him walk out of there without even a basic scan to see if he was still carrying some residue of…”

Steve shook his head. “Fury _decided_ to let him walk out of there. We had a battle to fight. We needed him. If there was a directive given that he was given his weapons and a free pass to leave, it was Fury that gave it.”

Tony looked up and snapped his fingers. Bruce looked at him.

“What?”

“Fury _knows_.”

“Knows what?

“He found out that Loki got loose from Asgard… what do you think he wanted to talk to Natasha and Thor about this morning? He had a pretty good idea Loki was coming here and coming after Clint, and if he knew that, he knew Clint still has something Loki wants.”

Thor scowled. “Then why pretend he knew nothing and allow Clint to remain in danger?”

Bruce chuckled. “Hasn’t everyone been saying we were keeping Clint under Fury’s radar and keeping him here because we could keep him safer than S.H.I.E.L.D.? My guess would be that Fury thinks the same thing. He knows what we’ve been up to… he’s been _letting_ us keep him in the dark about Clint because that way, he had an excuse to keep Clint here with us. I’m sure there are people who would want Clint in a metal box right now if they knew what was going on… Fury doesn’t want that and he’s making sure that it looks like he’s monitoring the situation here, but if he really wanted to know what was happening, he’d know.”

“He probably does,” Tony said. “Off the record, though.”

“What he knows off the record he can’t be held responsible for,” Steve pointed out.

“You realize that means he probably knows we’re all fucking him, too,” Tony muttered.

Steve cleared his throat. “Excuse me, but…”

“Okay, not _all_ of us are fucking him,” Tony corrected.

Bruce snorted. “I’m not guessing that was part of Fury’s plan, but…”

“He wanted a team,” Steve said. “That’s what he was pushing us toward. Stepping in and pulling Clint out of here would undermine that. The Avengers are his project. My guess would be that he _wanted_ to see if we would stand up and close ranks around Clint like a real team would, whether we’d pull together and protect our own, even if it meant disobeying him.”

“Fury _would_ do that,” Bruce said. “Test us like that.”

“So what do we do now?” Tony asked.

“We take care of Clint,” Bruce said. “And we figure out exactly what Loki’s up to… and I’m not sure Loki knows exactly what he’s up to.”

“My brother always has a plan,” Thor said.

“Yeah, but his plans have a tendency to have some pretty serious holes in them, on account of how he’s batshit fucking crazy,” Tony said. “Why all the fucking around? If he wants back the energy that he put into Clint, why hasn’t he taken it? He tried messing with Clint’s head, and that apparently didn’t work… I guess whatever he has to do, he found out he couldn’t do it from prison. So he had to bust out and show up here in person… but apparently that didn’t do it, either. Apparently he can’t just take it.”

“But apparently he can’t kill him and take it, either,” Bruce said. “If that would have worked, he’d just have killed him instead of beating him up.”

Thor shook his head. “The energy of the Tesseract can’t just be handed back and forth. It requires a proper container to hold it. And I don’t know what would be required to take that energy back from something you had put it into… not from a living being, anyway.”

“Well, if you don’t know, I’m betting that means Loki doesn’t either,” Tony said. “What kind of proper container, Thor? Is there any chance we could do something to get rid of this stuff, or at least get it away from Clint?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, let’s go look up some S.H.I.E.L.D. research on how they were storing it for weapons, and we’ll see what we can find out.”

 

 

 

 

Clint woke slowly, fighting haziness but dragged back to consciousness by the pain of the restraint straps against his skin, the blinding glare of the overhead lights, the burning sensation just underneath his skin that seemed to intensify with every motion. He moved his lips, but couldn’t put words together, his brain overwhelmed with sensory overload.

“Clint,” a voice said, and it was like an arrowhead jammed into his ears. He winced and tried to curl away from the pain, but that only sent the fire under his skin flaring up, blinding him in a red haze.

“I’m going to give you some more medication, but I don’t want you to go back to sleep, okay?”

It seemed to take a long time, but eventually the assault on his senses was blunted enough that he could open his eyes, squinting against the glare, and could recognize the face looking down at him as Bruce’s. At least, it looked like Bruce’s, but something in the fog in his head told him it wasn’t Bruce, not really. He tensed against the restraints.

“Can’t you untie me?”

“No,” the stranger who looked like Bruce said, sitting back in his chair.

“Where’s Natasha?”

“She’s busy.”

No. That wasn’t right. Natasha wouldn’t just be busy while he was strapped to this bed with strangers and imposters.

“What did you do to Natasha? Where is she? Who are you?”

“Nobody did anything to Natasha. You know who I am.”

“What do you want? I don’t know anything. I don’t know why they thought they could fool me into thinking you were really Bruce…”

Bruce chuckled and shook his head. “Yeah. And that’s why you’re still strapped down.”

“Why?”

“Because if you weren’t, we would have a professional assassin running around in the middle of actively experiencing paranoid hallucinations, and I can’t think of any part of that that’s _not_ a bad thing.”

Clint closed his eyes. “Hallucinations…”

“You remember what you did? You took…”

“Yeah. I  remember,” he said slowly. “So are you really Bruce?”

“I really am.”

“I can’t…”

Bruce reached over and ran his fingers carefully along Clint’s jaw. The touch sent sharp jagged signals to his brain, but there was still something familiar and comforting in it.

“Okay. You’re really Bruce.”

“Yep.”

“Where’s Natasha?”

“She’s resting,” Bruce said.

He frowned. “She wouldn’t just go and… no. She’d be here. What happened?”

Bruce sighed. “I think you pushed her a little too far this time. She had to back off.”

“Shit,” he muttered. “What did I do?”

“It’ll be all right,” Bruce said. “I may not be as pretty as she is, but I’ll stay with you. Tony and the rest of them are working, trying to figure things out. How are you feeling right now?”

“Pretty fucking awful. Everything hurts.”

“Yeah. But I want you to stay awake and talk to me for a little while, okay?”

“I’m not going to be much of a conversation partner.”

“That’s okay. I just want you to be able to tell me what’s going on so we can deal with it.”

Clint glanced over at him. “I remember Natasha asking me questions… about Loki, and… what he did… and… you were here, weren’t you.”

“Yeah.”

Clint nodded, closing his eyes. “Thought so.”

“If we don’t know, we can’t help you,” Bruce said.

“Help me?” Clint asked. “I don’t know why you still want to sit near me, much less help me.”

“You think this changes anything?” Bruce asked, shaking his head. “It doesn’t. Not for me. And not for the other guys, either. You’re still ours. We’re not letting anybody change that.”

Something about the words came to rest somewhere in Clint’s mind like a bird finding its nest and settling in.

“Even if I screw up?” he asked quietly.

“We expect you to screw up,” Bruce said. “Then we deal with it. That’s how this works. You’re not the only broken one around here, you know.”

Clint felt a hand brush over his own and he grabbed for it and held on, not caring that his nerves screamed in protest at the touch.

“You’re going to be okay,” Bruce said, after what seemed like a very long time.

“I don’t know about that. I have to piss and I’m tied to the bed.”

Bruce laughed. “You think you can walk?”

“Probably?”

“I’ll have Steve take you. If you go paranoid and freak out on him, he can just put you over his shoulder.”

“Fair enough,” he said, as Bruce worked at the straps.

When Steve returned him and let him slump back down to the bed, he expected the straps to go back on, but Bruce just settled back in his chair again.

“You’re not going to tie me back up?”

“Not as long as you’re still lucid,” Bruce said. “If I think you’re hallucinating again, I’ll have Steve and Thor come help me.”

“I think… if you keep talking to me, I can keep my head on straight.”

“Your head’s never been on straight that I know of, Clint.”

“Yeah. Probably right about that. But you’ll still stay, right?”

“Of course I will. Although both of us will need to sleep eventually… if I have to leave, Thor or Tony will be here.”

“Will you tell Natasha I said I’m sorry?”

“Yeah. I’ll have Thor tell her.”

“Okay.”


	32. Chapter 32

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint's little experiment makes for a rough few days for everyone. Once he gets through it, he's ready to put everything back in its box and not deal with it anymore... except that the rest of the team isn't willing to let him.

Bruce was rubbing his eyes and trying to remember the basic functions of the coffee maker in the lab when his phone rang.

“Hello?”

“You’re the only one who actually answers his phone with ‘hello’,” Natasha said.

“Oh,” Bruce muttered, glancing at the clock. “Wow… it’s almost nine in the morning. At least, I hope it’s morning. How do the other guys answer the phone?”

“Clint just answers it and doesn’t say anything. Tony usually answers it ‘Stark!’ like he should be getting an award for it. With Thor you usually get his voice somewhere away from the phone going, ‘I am not sure I’m operating this correctly…’ and Steve usually accidentally hangs up on you and then has to figure out how to call you back and apologize.”

“Oh.”

“JARVIS said you were awake, so… I thought I’d call for an update on how the night went.”

“Pretty well, up until about four in the morning,” Bruce said, attempting to separate the paper coffee filters. “Clint finally went out for a while and slept, and I got to catch a couple of hours while Tony kept an eye on him.”

“Something go wrong?”

“Yeah. Tony can’t deal with sick people. At all. That’s most of what went wrong. So Clint’s sick, and that was the end of Tony’s babysitting duties and the end of my nap.”

Natasha sighed. “Yeah. I didn’t figure that would start till later on today, but like I said, the test data comes from kind of a random sampling, and Clint has a fast metabolism.”

“What would start?”

“I’m assuming what you’re talking about. The nausea and vomiting, spiking temperatures, cold sweats, muscle cramps, dehydration, disorientation…”

“Yeah. That’d be it. And I can’t use the IV to get any more fluids into him, because the IV site gave out, and I’m not good enough at it to get another one into him while he’s this dehydrated.”

She hummed, and he could almost hear her thinking. “How long’s he been like this?”

“About five hours.”

“Okay. This is actually what happens when your body has figured out how to break down the drug, but the breakdown products are pretty nasty and your body really doesn’t like them. It means most of the actual original drug should be out of his system, so you shouldn’t have to worry about the neurological effects anymore…”

“He’s pretty confused.”

“He’s basically drunk, at the moment. One of the breakdown products has an effect similar to alcohol, except that it takes a lot of alcohol to make you as sick as this does.”

“Oh. That would explain it.”

“Five hours… Tony can check the data in the computer, but the worst of the nausea and the disorientation should be starting to clear up pretty soon. Within the next hour or so, you can probably start giving him some weak tea or some other fluids to hydrate him.”

“I wanted to ask…”

“Yeah?”

“You think it’s okay to move him? I mean, that isolation room is starting to freak me out, and I’m not the one…”

“Where are you going to take him?”

“My room. The bed’s more comfortable, and it’s closer to the kitchen and everything, and there’s a bathtub and a shower, and frankly, he needs a bath.”

She chuckled. “I don’t doubt it. You going to take that one?”

“I was going to let Thor do it. He’ll be happy about it. He’s been fussing to do something.”

“Well, by the time you’ve got him up there and cleaned up, he should be mostly coherent, but he’ll still feel lousy. Some fluids will help, but mostly he’s just stuck riding it out for a while. I wouldn’t give him any more painkillers… that’s just more shit for his system to have to detox.”

“He hasn’t had anything since last night.”

“Good,” she said.

“He wanted me to tell you he was sorry,” Bruce said, “but he was still under the influence then.”

“That’s the only time Clint ever apologizes,” she said. “You guys are… Thor was right. You guys handled this better without me. I’ll come down later today and say hi, but I’m going to let you take care of it for now.”

“I’ll call you if we need you.”

“I will. We…”

“Bruce!” Tony’s voice echoed through the lab, sounding distinctly unhappy. “I told you, I don’t do this whole sick person thing!”

“Gotta go. Tony’s whining.”

“Have fun.”

 

 

Bruce found Tony standing in the doorway of the sound isolation room with his arms across his chest, his face slightly pale.

“What?”

“You said you were coming right back. I told you, I can’t deal with...”

“You’d better never have kids,” Bruce said. “They throw up all the time. Like, every time you look at them.”

“Good. I’ll add that to the three hundred and ninety-seven other reasons I should never have kids,” Tony said, and bolted.

Bruce shook his head and stepped in, finding Clint pretty much where he’d left him, curled up in a ball at the edge of the bed with the sheets tangled in his fists, shivering, his hair and face streaked with sweat.

“Tony’s a sissy,” he muttered.

“Yeah,” Bruce agreed, sitting down at the foot of the bed.

“I wasn’t even going to throw up. He just thought I looked like I was.”

“Yeah, well… like you said, he’s a sissy. Natasha says you should be pretty much past that part and you should be able to drink something.”

“Probably could. Don’t feel quite as sick. Still feel pretty fucking awful, though.”

“That’s going to stick around a while yet,” Bruce said. “But we’re going to go up to my room and Thor’s going to get you cleaned up and I’ll make some ginger tea… it’s good for your stomach… and you can at least have a more comfortable bed to feel awful in.”

“Sounds good,” he said, then smiled slightly.

“What?”

“Just thinking that if you’re trying to get me out of the lab and into a regular bed for any purposes other than sleeping right now…”

“I’ll be honest with you… this is really not your best look, Clint. And you don’t smell great either.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m going to have JARVIS start running the water in the bath, and Thor can haul you up there and get you cleaned up, and I’ll go make some tea and see what else is in the kitchen that might work.”

“Bath sounds good.”

“Yeah. Not like it’s an excuse to get Thor to put his hands all over you, right?”

Clint chuckled. “Like he needs an excuse.”

“Well, he’s pretty worried about you, and he doesn’t like any of this very much, so I think he’s going to be more interested in making sure you’re okay than anything else.”

“He’s that worried? Natasha should have told you that stuff wouldn’t kill me…”

“Probably wouldn’t kill you, you mean? Or make you paranoid enough to kill us? Yeah. And you think we like watching you suffer? Sure… I love watching my friend in pain. Or having him not even know who I am. All that. No big deal, right?”

Clint turned his face away. “You could have just left me alone.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“I didn’t ask…”

“You didn’t have to. You’re not getting that part, are you? About the rest of us, and us not letting you do this by yourself?”

“It’s my shit to deal with.”

“Not anymore.”

“It was easier when it was.”

“Why? Because we’re not going to let you hurt yourself?”

He shrugged. “Someone’s got to do it… hurt me. If I do it myself…”

“Enough,” Bruce said, raising his hand. “You’re done talking. Or at least I’m done listening. JARVIS? Where’s Thor?”

“I will call for him immediately.”

Bruce nodded. “Thanks. I’ll be in the kitchen.”

He didn’t look back at Clint before he walked out; he didn’t want to see his face. Either what he’d said had gotten through and it had hurt, or it hadn’t gotten through at all, and he didn’t really like either option at the moment.

 

 

 

When he arrived at his room with a tray of hot tea and cups and cans of ginger ale and crackers, he could hear voices from the bathroom. He couldn’t make out what they were saying, but he heard Thor’s low, rumbling laugh and figured that was a good sign. He set the tray down and knocked on the bathroom door.

“There better not be anything but bathing going on in there!”

Thor opened the door, chuckling. His other hand had a hold of Clint’s upper arm, steadying him as he made a half-hearted attempt to dry himself off.

“Entirely innocent, I promise,” Thor said. “My friend is in no state for anything else quite yet.”

“Getting closer, though,” Clint said.

“You look better,” Bruce noted. Although still pale and with dark hollows under his eyes, he looked more alert and less miserable.

“Being clean makes a difference,” Clint said. “And the hot water helped with the muscle cramps… although they aren’t exactly letting up yet.”

“Part of that’s probably being dehydrated. Come drink something.”

Bruce poured all three of them a cup of tea as Thor persuaded Clint into a pair of Bruce’s sweatpants and brought him out into the bedroom.

“That smells good,” Clint said.

“Ginger’s good stuff. Especially if your stomach’s not in great shape.”

Apparently Clint liked ginger tea, because he drank as much of it as Bruce would make, sending him back to the kitchen twice and complaining about the unreasonably small size of the teapot. Eventually Bruce decided there could probably be too much of a good thing, and even though Clint was starting to look more like himself, Bruce sent him to bed.

Clint complained until he was actually in Bruce’s bed, at which point he stopped complaining and declared this a tremendous improvement over his previous sleeping arrangements.

“Whose idea was the metal bed in the padded room, anyway?” he asked.

“Well, you decided to inject yourself with something so nasty the Russian government stopped testing it. So I’m going to say that was pretty much all on you,” Bruce said.

 “It’s, like, noon.”

“Go to sleep. By the time you wake up, this stuff should be mostly out of your system, and maybe we’ll actually be able to all sit and eat some dinner and watch a movie together.”

 

 

 

There was no dinner and no movie, because Clint fell asleep and slept through the afternoon and most of the evening, stumbled off to use the bathroom, drank three cans of ginger ale, and went back to sleep and spent the rest of the night there, down in the kind of deep exhaustion where the brain and body conspired to insist upon rest even for those not willing. Bruce climbed into bed with him, since it was, after all, his bed. He tried to leave room between them, but Clint was almost immediately curled up against him without waking. At some point during the night, Tony wandered in and climbed into bed behind Bruce, nudging him over and squeezing him between the two of them. Clint shifted slightly, but just buried his face in Bruce’s shoulder, and Tony just wrapped an arm around him and rubbed his stubbled cheek against the back of Bruce’s neck and yawned.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Just fine,” Bruce murmured. “There seems to be a lot of people in my bed.”

“Complaining?”

“Nope.”

 

 

 

He woke the next morning and found himself thinking in a fuzzy, half-asleep way that his life had definitely changed in interesting ways when the first things he took note of, after the time on the clock by the bed, was whose bed it was, who else was in in, and whose hands were on various parts of his body.

His initial assessment revealed that Tony was the one pressed up against his back, but his breathing was still deep and even and his arm was still draped loosely over Bruce’s side. Clint, on the other hand, was definitely not asleep anymore, and those were definitely Clint’s extraordinarily strong archer’s hands on his ass, and Clint’s mouth against his throat.

“Mmmph… what?”

“Morning,” Clint murmured, his lips still against Bruce’s skin.

“Apparently you’re feeling better?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“What exactly are you up to?”

Darkened gray eyes looked up at him for a moment. “Saying thank you.”

“I… for what?”

Clint’s wandering hands seemed to have disturbed Tony, who yawned and mumbled something, but didn’t wake. Clint chuckled and slid lower, his tongue tracing lines down Bruce’s chest.

“For… you know. Being there. Even… if I do… you know… stupid things.”

Bruce ruffled his hands through Clint’s hair. “You don’t have to…”

“I don’t _have_ to do anything,” Clint said. “Want to.”

“You’re supposed to be resting…”

“I did that.”

Bruce grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him back up. Clint looked back at him with a combination of amusement and confusion.

“Problem?”

“Yeah. You’ve had sort of a rough last day or two, and you…”

“I’m fine.”

“Don’t be an ass,” Tony said sleepily. “You haven’t eaten anything in two days, and even if your body wasn’t still a mess, your head definitely still is.”

Clint rolled his eyes. “My head is fine.”

“No, it’s not, and pretending it’s fine is how this whole mess started anyway,” Tony said. “Nobody’s playing with you until we figure out what you’ve done to yourself with this whole top-secret-military-mind-altering-drug adventure.”

“What he said,” Bruce added, since Clint’s hand were still doing things that were making it hard to think of anything coherent to say on his own. He reached down, grabbed Clint’s wrists, and somewhat reluctantly pulled his hands up to rest on his chest.

“I don’t need to sit around and think about… things,” Clint protested. “I need…”

“No… you _want_ to forget about it, but you _need_ to deal with it this time,” Bruce said.

“I needed to know what I had that Loki wanted so bad. I found out. The rest of it…”

“The rest of it’s not about Loki. It’s about you,” Tony said. “And all hiding from it did was put you in a really bad state of mind, and we’re really not interested in having you go back there.”

Clint whined and pulled his hands free. “Come on. What are you going to make me do?”

“First, you’re going to eat something,” Bruce said. “Then, you’re going to get a clean bill of health from Natasha telling us that stuff is completely out of your system.”

“Great.”

“And then, you’re going to talk to somebody,” Bruce said.

Clint scowled. “Who do you want me to talk to?”

“Well, as I see it, there’s two people here that you have a hard time successfully lying to,” Tony said, “and that would be Natasha and Thor.”

“Fuck. I’m not talking to Natasha about… you’re serious? Fine. I’ll talk to Thor. What do you want me to tell him?”

“Whatever you want,” Bruce said. “If you can convince him that you’re okay and you’re not just pretending to be, we’ll believe him.”

“When did he become the team shrink?” Clint asked.

“When we figured out he was the only one of us that wasn’t mentally unstable to start with,” Tony said. “Besides, anyone who can talk Natasha into stepping down from anything that involves you has be pretty convincing.”

Clint sat up, wincing. “Oww. Fuck. I’m sore. And I am sort of hungry.”

“Let’s go find something for breakfast,” Bruce said. “Tony probably hasn’t eaten in two days either.”

“I ate… at some point.”

“Yeah. Let’s go have breakfast.”


	33. Chapter 33

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor works on putting Clint's scrambled brain back in place. Loki decides to make an appearance to discuss the situation, and Natasha decides that she's not in a discussing kind of mood. More of a putting holes in people kind of mood, actually.

Steve and Natasha had apparently already decided that breakfast was a good idea, because they were both in the kitchen when the three stragglers arrived. Thor was perched on one of the stools beside the counter, keeping a close eye on the food preparations, but when he saw Clint and the others he looked up from his inspection and grinned.

“Good morning, friends! You all look well!”

“Alive, at least,” Clint muttered.

Natasha glanced over her shoulder. “What’s his problem this morning?”

“I still feel weird.”

“And no one will have sex with him,” Tony added.

Steve attempted to not drop the pancakes he was transferring from the pan to a plate. Natasha rolled her eyes.

“You do that just for the shock value, don’t you?”

“Not really,” Tony said, shrugging. “Cap’s the only one around here that it’s really possible to shock anymore, and that’s like shooting paralyzed fish in a barrel with no water.”

Thor frowned. “I’m quite certain that isn’t how I heard that…”

“Yeah. Tony has his own bizarre version of… well, everything,” Bruce said.

Natasha took the pan of bacon off the burner and turned around to lean on the counter. “As for why you still feel weird, Clint, there’s not a lot of data on it because it wasn’t really the kind of thing they were really interested in, but you’re talking about a drug that causes a massive release of excitatory neurotransmitters and then overloads the receptors for them, and it enhances the effect of some inhibitory neurotransmitters and blocks the activity of others.”

“When did you become an expert in neurobiological psychopharmacology?” Tony asked.

She smiled. “Last night, smartass. Agent Hill wouldn’t appreciate you stealing her lines.”

“Loosely borrowing her lines.”

“Whatever.”

“Do you want to explain what any of that actually has to do with my brain?” Clint asked.

“It means you basically did the same thing to your brain cells that Steve’s doing to those eggs he’s scrambling,” Tony said.

“It means,” Natasha said, giving Tony a sharp look, “that you’ll have some residual symptoms until things balance back out. The most common ones in the reports were sensory hypersensitivity, unstable mood, abnormal reflexes, and impairment in coordination.”

“Hmph.”

“What that has to do with nobody being willing to have sex with you, I don’t know,” she added, “but I’m going to guess that nobody wants to play with you while you’re still neurologically and emotionally unstable.”

“Bingo,” Bruce said.

“When is he not emotionally unstable?” Tony asked.

“They said I have to get clearance from you,” Clint said.

She turned away. “You don’t need clearance from me to go get laid.”

She reached for the pan of bacon. Clint stood for a moment, watching her.

“How pissed off at me are you, exactly?” he asked finally.

“Pissed off enough that I’m only talking to you because I’m an adult and we work together.”

“Oh.”

She sighed. “I’ll get over it, Clint. It’s not like it’s the first time. Sit down… you need something to eat. You two standing back there looking like you want to disappear back to your lab, too… there’s lots of food and it’s been a rough couple of days.”

In a short time everyone was settled with a plate of food, and at least eating was something they could all do in peace for a few minutes.

Clint picked at his food and mashed his pancakes into paste until Natasha finally spotted him doing it.

“What’s wrong with your food?”

“Nothing. It tastes… funny. Everything tastes weird.”

She nodded. “The parts of your brain that process sensory information take a pretty nasty hit from that drug. It should settle down in a few days.”

He pushed his plate away, giving Steve an apologetic look.

“Sorry. You make awesome pancakes. I just…”

Steve raised his hand. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure Thor will eat the extras.”

Clint tucked his knees up against his chest and rested his head on them, looking silently at nothing and half-listening to the others talk. He only half-noticed Bruce waving Natasha out to the hall, or when they came back a few minutes later. He did notice Natasha whispering something to Thor, but didn’t bother to react to it; he felt dazed and numb and distant and none of it seemed to matter. He seemed to remember feeling fine not that long ago when he’d woken up… had Natasha said something about unstable moods? He was pretty sure she had. He probably should have listened.

“Little Hawk,” Thor said, and Clint realized it was probably the third or fourth time he’d said it.

“Yeah?”

“Why don’t you come with me?”

He shook his head. “I’m fine. I’m just…”

“Either you go with him, or you come with me,” Natasha said, “and he’s feeling a lot friendlier than I am right now.”

Clint looked up at her. “Is this one of those things?”

“What things?”

“Where somebody has to have a talk with Clint?”

“Yes,” she said, trying not to smile. “This is one of those things where somebody has to have a talk with Clint.”

“Look, I’m sorry I was an asshole and I know I was stupid…”

She sighed and reached over to rub her hand through his hair. “We’ll worry about you being stupid and being an asshole later, okay? Just go with Thor for a little while. We just want to know where your head’s at so we know what to do with you.”

“What if I don’t…”

“I think you missed the part where this wasn’t optional,” she said.

Clint looked to Bruce and Tony, but they both shrugged.

“Why can’t I just…”

“Because none of us can deal with starting all over with you from square one,” Bruce said. “This isn’t all about you, you know. This is about us… all of us. And you’re not going back to where you were before.  We’ve all worked too hard for that… including you.”

“And Thor seems to be good at figuring out what to do with you when the rest of us aren’t sure,” Tony said.

Clint glanced at Thor, who gave him a reassuring grin.

“Little Hawk, has there ever been a time when you and I couldn’t work out something satisfactory between us?”

Clint considered it for a moment, and had to admit to himself that Thor did seem to have the ability to put his head back on straight, even if he did it in some ways that weren’t probably standard operating procedure. Something in the back of his head told him to get up, to follow Thor, to do whatever he said, told him that if he did, Thor would make everything be all right, at least for a little while, that he would take it all away, at least for a little while, sort out the confusion and reassemble the pieces. It didn’t seem to make sense that someone who wasn’t even human could understand how to do that, but it didn’t matter; he stood up slowly and let Thor lead the way toward the elevator and his room.

 

 

 

He barely realized what was happening until he was stripped of his clothes and steered toward the bed by large, patient hands. He was tempted to just collapse into the bed and stay there, but Thor propped him up.

“Sit up. On your knees.”

Clint sat back on his heels and stared at the wall. At least, he stared at the wall until a strip of cloth was looped over his eyes and tied behind his head. His hands immediately came up to pull it away.

“No,” Thor said quietly.

Clint’s hands dropped.

“Good.”

He sat in silence, and after a moment he felt the bed shift as Thor settled down on the bed in front of him. He felt the sudden urge to reach out, but kept still, waiting. He could hear that Thor had something in his hands, something with a metallic clink, and then he felt those hands around his neck, the smooth touch and the soft smell of leather, the sound of a buckle sliding into place. He’d felt this collar around his throat once before but it felt much more familiar than that, almost like something he’d always known. The world seemed to slide slightly sideways, and his ability to think slipped away.

“Is that magic?” he heard himself asking.

Thor chuckled. “No, my little Hawk. Just a different state of mind.”

“It wouldn’t do that if anyone else did it…”

“I know. That’s why they sent you with me.”

A surprisingly quick and light kiss brushed across his cheek.

“What are you supposed to do with me?”

“That depends on you. First, we must talk, my friend.”

 “Yeah. I figured. What do you want to know?”

He heard Thor sigh. “It’s not so much that I want to know, little Hawk. It’s that the team needs to understand, and you need to speak of it, and…”

“Did anybody even ask you if it was okay to put you in charge of debriefing me about the things your brother did? That would be like sending me in to debrief someone Natasha had tortured…”

“They didn’t have to ask. I didn’t know what Loki was capable of before… but I know now. I would fight to redeem him if I thought he had any interest in redemption, but his heart is set on other things. I will not enjoy hearing about the harm done to you by someone I loved and trusted, but I would rather hear it than have you keep it in silence.”

“But I…”

“You’re thinking too much,” Thor said, and he reached up and hooked one finger through the loop on the front of the collar and tugged at it, and this small touch derailed everything that had been going on in Clint’s head again.

“You don’t have to tell me what really happened, little Hawk. We were there when you spoke of it. How was that different from what you let yourself believe happened?”

“I know it’s not really any different. Either way, he…”

“It _is_ different. To you, it is different. Tell me why.”

Clint sighed and tried to focus on the darkness in front of his face and the closeness of Thor’s body and not let himself slip too far away into memories he didn’t want to live through again.

“Following orders… I’ve followed orders I didn’t like. Plenty of times. I have a job and I follow orders. Loki… took over being the person that gave the orders, but it wasn’t even that different, really. I knew in my head I didn’t want to be doing the things he was telling me to do… but I’ve been on missions where I did things I really didn’t want to do, because I was told to.”

“And sex?”

“Officially, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents don’t engage in sexual encounters during missions. Off the record, which most of our work is, sometimes sex is how you get where you need to be. Sometimes that’s how you get an open door into a place you’d never have been able to break into. Sometimes it’s how you get information somebody wouldn’t have given up if you tortured them. Sometimes, it’s just how you let somebody think they’ve got the upper hand and they’re playing you.”

“This is not enjoyable.”

“Not really. Not usually. But you learn to go along with it. It… worked for me. It got me what I needed.”

“But…”

“I figure it’s probably sort of what a hooker feels like, you know?”

“Someone who provides sex as a paid service?”

“Yeah. You know… it’s just… what you do. You’re not there to enjoy it. It’s your job. Whatever the person wants, whatever you have to do for them to get your money, or your intel, or whatever you’re there for… you just do it. You don’t have to like it. Sometimes you hate it. But it’s a job.”

“You let yourself think that’s what happened with Loki.”

“Yeah. Except it wasn’t.”

“Tell me how what really happened was different.”

Clint took a deep breath, and suddenly he realized that the blindfold wasn’t to obscure his vision; it was to keep him from having to be ashamed of the stinging tears that burned his eyes.

“When you’re… doing what you have to do… following orders, doing your job… you’re willing to be there. Maybe you don’t really _want_ to be there, but you agreed to be there and you know why you’re there and you’re…”

He found himself unable to put words together.

“You are there because you have agreed to be,” Thor said. “Loki changed those rules.”

“It was an order I wasn’t willing to follow,” Clint said, struggling with his own voice. “I wasn’t going to do it. It wasn’t worth it. There was nothing to gain. I wasn’t… I told him I wasn’t doing it. I told him… I tried to leave… I tried to stop…”

“He took your control away from you.”

“All of it,” Clint said, holding up his hands helplessly. “Every bit of it.”

“Not all of it,” Thor said, and Clint felt a hand tracing gently over his chest. “He could only take your body. Your heart was always your own.”

“Yeah, well… it couldn’t stop him.”

“No,” Thor agreed. “But it kept you alive.”

“I wish it hadn’t.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Wouldn’t it be a lot easier for all the rest of you if…”

“No. It would not. Besides, have you ever known any member of this team to seek an easy way to do something when a more difficult way was available?”

“No,” Clint said, shaking his head. “But still…”

“Had you not survived my brother’s efforts, I would not have you here with me now.”

“Like you really want to be here, talking about this?” Clint asked.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you.”

That wasn’t anything Clint had even remotely expected or been prepared to deal with, so he was frozen and stunned for a moment before he heard Thor’s laugh.

“No fear, little Hawk. I expect nothing of the sort in return. And you are not in any state to offer it, even if I did.”

Clint tried to say something, although he wasn’t sure what he intended to say. Regardless, his mouth wouldn’t put anything like a coherent sentence together.

“Loki rendered you helpless,” Thor said. “But he never broke you. You never stopped being Clint. You did not surrender. You did not yield. You were overpowered, but you were never defeated. Do you understand?”

Clint nodded slowly.

“Good,” Thor said, tracing the side of Clint’s face with his fingers. “Now… tell me what you need from me.”

Clint tried to speak and failed; he shook his head and tried again.

“Need… you to hurt me.”

“Why?”

“I need… someone to take everything away for a little while. Someone I trust.”

“Of course, little Hawk. But perhaps I should ask Natasha if it’s safe to…”

“I don’t care,” Clint said, grabbing for him in a sudden panic that he would go away and leave him like this. “It’s fine. I’m fine. You won’t… you know. What to do. How far to take it. Please.”

“I hope your faith in me is never misplaced,” Thor said, leaning in to kiss him, “because I don’t think I can tell you ‘no’.”

 

 

 

Bruce had somehow managed to convince Tony that it would not actually kill or even seriously harm him to assist with washing up the breakfast dishes, although Natasha could hear him complaining about the stickiness of syrup from across the living room. She slumped back into the couch and rubbed her eyes.

“I could go and finish that for them,” Steve said.

“Let ‘em deal with it,” she said.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah. Just… been worried about Clint.”

“He’s with Thor… they seem to do all right together,” Steve said.

She grinned. “Except Clint can’t walk properly when they’re done.”

Steve only turned slightly red. “Well, he doesn’t seem to mind.”

“No. He’d be…”

She snapped to alertness as an alarm buzzer went off and JARVIS interrupted her.

“Immediate presence of threat detected.”

“What threat?”

“Loki.”

“Where is he?”

“Tracking… anomalous energy source consistent with the identified threat has entered the building and is…”

“Hello, Agent Romanoff,” Loki said, stepping out of the air in the middle of the living room, his hair sleek and his face smoothly unconcerned. “And the Captain, of course.”

Tony and Bruce had come running from the kitchen at the sound of the alarm, but at the sight of Loki Tony’s arm flew out and grabbed Bruce by the shirt, pulling him back and muttering something urgently in his ear. Bruce’s shoulders relaxed just slightly, and Natasha breathed a sigh of relief; she wasn’t ready to have the Hulk unleashed on this situation just yet. Loki followed her gaze and smiled.

“Were you concerned that my very presence might unleash the monster in your midst?”

“There’s only one monster here,” Steve said, “and it isn’t Bruce.”

Loki shrugged. “Say what you wish, but I know you fear the beast…”

“Yeah. Terrified of him. That’s why he lives here and works next to me in my lab all day,” Tony snapped.

“JARVIS, have you alerted Clint and Thor?” Natasha demanded.

“No. I was ordered not to disturb them without your…”

“Good. Leave them alone. We’ll handle this.”

Loki smiled. “Last time, all six of you could barely handle me. And that was with the green brute in action.”

“True,” Tony said. “But first of all, we did handle you. And second of all, now we’re dealing with little Daddy-Took-All-My-God-Powers-Away Loki.”

The smile faded. “Not all of them. I can demonstrate if you like.”

“What do you want?” Steve asked, stepping forward.

“I wish to discuss the situation regarding Agent Barton. He is, after all, in possession of something that belongs to me.”

Steve opened his mouth to say something, probably something very sensible, but Bruce got there first.

“From what I understand, it doesn’t belong to you,” Bruce said. “And it’s your own stupid fault for putting it in Agent Barton in the first place, and if you had any self-control and weren’t a childish little prick who always has to have his way no matter what it costs…”

Loki’s jaw clenched and Natasha would have been amused at how obviously Bruce’s words had hit close to the bone, but she was busy sliding her hand quietly behind her back.

“Regardless of whether it belongs to me, I will have it back,” Loki said. “I thought to extend an offer of cooperation, so that perhaps we might…”

Natasha’s pistol was deafeningly loud in the enclosed space. The bullet hit Loki in the shoulder, and while it didn’t do the kind of damage it would have done to a human, he did wince and stumble backwards with blood welling between his fingers as he clutched at the wound. She glanced quickly at Bruce and realized that he was breathing hard, but Tony had him firmly by both arms, and whatever he was saying, it seemed to be keeping Bruce just on this side of rational thinking.

“That is hardly the way to deal with someone who has arrived in the spirit of cooperation,” Loki muttered, straightening up. “Your superiors would not…”

She glanced over again. “Tony?”

“We’re good.”

“Good.”

The next two shots hit him first in the metal chest plate, denting it, and then below it, a wound that dropped the God of Mischief to one knee with a stifled exclamation of pain. Warned this time, Bruce was watching with eyes that looked more like Bruce’s than the Hulk’s now, and Tony turned to look at Loki as he slowly rose to his feet again.

“This treatment is not acceptable,” he forced out, still bent over in pain.

“So bullets won’t kill you, but they can still hurt like hell,” Natasha said. “Good. I owe you a hell of a lot of hurt on Agent Barton’s behalf… and when I’m done paying you back for him, I’ve got a list of other people who deserve some.”

Loki scowled. “Arrogant little wench…”

“Shoot him in the balls,” Tony suggested. “See how he likes that.”

“Or the face,” Bruce added.

“There’s five rounds left in this clip and eight more in the pistol in my ankle holster,” she said. “Call me a wench again. Please.”

“Definitely the balls,” Bruce said. “Then the face.”

Natasha raised her pistol, and when Loki realized what she was taking aim at, he stepped backwards and vanished as abruptly as he had arrived.

“JARVIS, lock down the residential floor and don’t let him get near Clint…”

“He appears to be gone, Agent Romanoff. I am no longer detecting any signs of his unique energy pattern, and with our system updates I don’t think he would be able to disguise them.”

“Sissy,” Tony said.

Natasha checked the safety on her pistol and slipped it back into its holster.

“So you’re carrying two loaded weapons at all times and nobody noticed?” Tony asked.

“Steve noticed,” she said.

“Steve gets his hands on parts of you that…”

“I’m an expert at concealing things,” she said. “And if you think the pistol you just saw and the one in my ankle holster are the only two lethal things I’ve got on me right now, guess again.”

“We probably should have found out what his plans for negotiation were before you shot him,” Steve pointed out.

Natasha shrugged. “Oops.”

“You can’t negotiate with people who belong in locked-down mental institutions,” Bruce said.

“I’m sorry I…” Natasha began, but Bruce cut her off.

“It’s fine. I don’t… you trusted me to be able to keep the Other Guy from showing up?”

“I trusted you and Tony to be able to do it together,” she said. “Besides, if he had shown up, all he’d have done is trash the living room and beat the shit out of Loki.”

“It’s a lot easier to keep it together when somebody’s talking you down,” Bruce admitted, “but I’m really not sure it’s safe to put Tony in that position…”

“Since when is ‘safe’ even a relevant term in my dictionary?” Tony asked. “Standing next to you when you’re half a breath away from turning into the Hulk isn’t even the stupidest thing I’ve done _today_.”

“JARVIS,” Natasha asked. “Are Clint and Thor okay?”

“They are undisturbed and unaware of the recent situation.”

“Good. Keep it that way,” she said. “Actually… fill Thor in next time he’s alone, but don’t tell Clint.”

“Of course, Agent Romanoff. Am I to indicate to Thor that you shot his brother multiple times, or shall I…”

“Just tell him we managed to scare him off.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What, we jumped out and went ‘boo!’ and he ran?” Tony asked.

She sighed. “Fury was right. You’d have made a terrible S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.”


	34. Chapter 34

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thor gives Clint what he's been looking for... although he does manage to have surprises up his sleeve. Well, not literally up his sleeve, since they're naked. But you know what I mean. Tony mentions something that's been preoccupying his mind... and other parts of him... and Bruce figures out exactly how to take advantage of it. 
> 
> Sorry for the delay... lousy time of year for me to accomplish much of anything. Working on it, though!

“What are you up to?” Clint asked, kneeling on the bed and resisting the temptation to pull off the blindfold as he listened to Thor rummaging through his dresser.

“Considering what to do with you.”

“I thought all the leather straps were in the bottom drawer.”

He heard Thor chuckle. “You are observant, little Hawk, but we won’t be using those.”

Clint scowled. “You said you were going to…”

“You asked me to hurt you.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’m not entirely sure that you’re well enough in mind or in body for that. I’m accommodating your request against my better judgment. But I’m not going to restrain you.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t trust you to tell me if you were in trouble,” Thor said, “and I’m concerned about your well-being, and if I think you are in trouble, I don’t want to have to waste any time freeing you from restraints before I can try to help you. And before you complain about me not trusting you to tell me if you were in trouble, you’re the one who told me I shouldn’t.”

Clint had to concede that point, but he sat back on his heels and sighed. Apparently Thor was planning on handling him gently, and that meant he wasn’t going to get what he was looking for.

“Don’t worry, little Hawk,” Thor said. “I have other plans for you.”

“Oh?”

He felt Thor’s weight shift the mattress behind him, and large hands rested on his sides to steady him before one hand slid up over his shoulder and stroked along the edge of the leather collar, sending an involuntary shudder down Clint’s spine. His other hand seemed to be reaching for something.

“What have you got?”

“The ladies at the store said this is a butt plug,” Thor said. “Not a very elegant name, but an accurate one, I suppose.”

“You don’t have those in Asgard?”

“Of course we have them in Asgard. There are kinds of sex in Asgard that humans haven’t even thought of yet,” Thor said, amused. “We just have different names for things.”

“I’m trying to imagine you at this store with the ladies showing you their selection of butt plugs,” Clint said.

“They were extremely helpful,” Thor said. “They had an impressive selection… quite a variety of colors and materials and such. Some of them were of a small and entirely reasonable size…”

“Yeah.”

“This one is not.”

Clint couldn’t help but snap to attention at that. “What? Wait.”

“You know the words,” Thor said, and then there was a very strong hand resting between his shoulder blades, pressing him forward until he had to put his hands down to balance himself, then pushing until he was forced to let himself slump forward with his head on his arms and his ass in the air, held there by Thor’s firm grasp on his hip.

“There. Much better.”

Clint’s mind registered that there was nothing holding him where he was other than Thor’s hands, and that strong as Thor was, he was fairly sure he was quick enough to get out from under them. He contemplated for a moment, thinking that would teach Thor not to properly restrain him, but the half-hearted instructions he sent to his body accomplished nothing but some uneasy squirming. Thor rubbed a hand over his shoulder.

“Relax, little Hawk.”

“Why should I relax?”

“Because if you don’t, this will hurt more.”

“Okay, I’m taking the blindfold off.”

“If you take the blindfold off, we are finished playing,” Thor said.

Clint kept his hands where they were. A moment later, he felt something slick and cold against his ass, and he shivered.

“I should at least get to see…”

“Hush.”

At first the thing didn’t feel too unreasonable, but Thor was both patient and relentless, and after a minute the pressure had become a rather sharp burn, and then close enough to pain to make him grit his teeth to keep silent.

“Are you all right, little Hawk?”

“Fine.”

He regretted saying it a moment later, because now it was definitely pain, and he squirmed and bit his lip, barely realizing that he was breathing in short, shallow gasps.

“Fuck!” he blurted out, unable to maintain his silence.

Thor chuckled and gave the thing a last push, forcing a desperate whine from Clint, but then the narrower base slid in easily and his body clenched down involuntarily, which only served to seat the damn thing even deeper.

“Breathe,” Thor said, not sounding terribly concerned.

“Trying,” Clint hissed. “What the hell…”

“Don’t worry. It will keep your mind from wandering.”

Clint had to admit that his mind definitely wasn’t wandering anywhere at the moment; it was totally focused on the intense pressure of his body slowly stretching to accommodate Thor’s new toy. He heard Thor move and felt his weight shift on the bed, moving off to the side instead of behind him.

“I could get the hell out of here right now if I wanted to,” Clint said uneasily.

“Of course you could. I would not stop you.”

“What are you doing?”

“Hush, little Hawk. Brace yourself.”

“Wait… for what?”

Whatever landed across his buttocks was not solid and bruising like Thor’s hand had been; it was something thin and somewhat flexible and it didn’t make much noise, but the sensation was a sudden sharp sting that grew swiftly into a searing fire like a live electrical wire buried and burning just under the surface of his skin. He muffled a shout and bit his lip hard.

“Excellent,” Thor murmured. “You have an impressive ability to tolerate pain.”

“Been practicing all my life,” Clint muttered.

“And yet, when you could ask me for anything, you ask for more pain.”

“It’s the only thing I know I can trust.”

This blow was harder than the first one, and Clint could feel how carefully the force was measured to raise angry red welts on his skin without drawing blood. Then there were more blows, enough to make him stop thinking about anything except the sharp lines of fire across his back, his buttocks, his shoulders, his thighs. His mind narrowed in on how the sensation was different on each area of skin, more burning across his upper body, sharper and cleaner over his ass and thighs. Thor paused for a moment, studying him, and then returned to his work, this time letting the blows fall at an angle across the welts that were already there, and the pain that flared where the lines overlapped was intense enough to draw small sounds out of him almost before he realized it, small and desperate sounds through clenched teeth and stinging tears hidden in the welcome darkness of the blindfold. And when Thor finally stopped and slid back off the bed, the throbbing pain along each stripe drawn across his body fought for his attention with the still almost-painful but still increasingly exciting pressure of Thor’s other toy.

“Talk to me.”

Clint half-laughed. “What do you want me to say?”

Apparently that answer was good enough, because Thor briskly grasped him and flipped him onto his back, inverting the world for a moment and leaving him grasping for something to hold onto. Then his back hit the bed, and even though Tony only had the finest sheets on all of the beds in his tower, they felt like burlap and sandpaper against Clint’s raw and scalded skin. To make things worse, the abrupt new position now had a certain intrusive object pressing into him at an even more obtrusive angle, different and uncomfortable enough that he whined and jerked his hips upward to try to escape it. Thor chuckled.

“Shall we dispense with that?”

“Yes, we fucking shall,” Clint exhaled, his chest tight.

He’d half-forgotten that “dispensing with that” meant that the painfully wide part of the thing had to be dealt with, but this time, with his blood and brain flooded with endorphins and adrenaline and the lines of fire across his back to distract him, it slid out unexpectedly smoothly, and was just as smoothly replaced by several of Thor’s fingers. Before Clint could make a sound of either protest or approval, those fingers were pressing in all of the right places to have Clint’s back arching and to steal all the air out of his lungs. And if that wasn’t enough, a moment later a very warm and very talented mouth lowered itself around his cock, tongue working in long strokes, lips pressing against heated skin. Even if Clint had been expecting that he wouldn’t have been prepared for it, and as overstimulated as he already was, it didn’t take much of that to send him over the edge, attempting to mutter a warning that Thor quite thoroughly ignored until his tongue was slowly pulling the last desperate shudders out of his exhausted body.

He wasn’t sure how he could still manage to be aware of anything, but he was sharply and acutely aware of Thor’s cock pressing hard against his leg as Thor slid up to study his face.

“I will take this off now…” he said, and Clint felt his hands reaching for the blindfold. His own hands were unsteady as he reached up and grabbed the big wrists.

“Leave it on.”

“Oh?”

“I want… please. Want you to fuck me.”

“Little Hawk, I don’t know if…”

“Please.”

Thor moved, and Clint shifted his legs to accommodate him between them, lifting his hips. This was the first time that Clint had already been so loose and slicked that Thor slid in easily, so easily that it drew a small, surprised exclamation from him as he found himself suddenly buried deeply. Clint attempted to wrap still-shaky legs around him in encouragement, but there wasn’t much encouragement needed, because Thor seemed to have realized that this time, he could fuck him, _really_ fuck him, without holding back and without fear of hurting him, so he did, driving in relentlessly, rocking Clint’s body beneath him, breathing hard. Clint could feel the pulse of it inside him when he came, his strong hands gripping Clint’s shoulders.

The blackness was right there, offering itself, ready to take him down into the nothingness he usually wanted so desperately. On the other hand, though, there was Thor’s weight on his chest, Thor’s hair tangled between his fingers, Thor’s cock still heavy and half-hard inside him, held there by Clint’s legs wrapped around him.

“You may go, little Hawk. I will be here when you return.”

Clint shook his head numbly and fumbled for a grip on Thor’s arms. “Think I’ll stay.”

“You don’t…”

“No… ‘s okay. Want to stay.”

Thor gently pulled the blindfold away and kissed him on the forehead. “I’m glad.”

Clint was vaguely aware of Thor moving him, adjusting their bodies, swiping a shirt over any sticky spots, and then settling back in and pulling Clint back into his arms. He yawned and tucked his head against Thor’s shoulder and thought about nothing except being warm and content.

 

 

 

 

“JARVIS, I thought I asked you to pull up a graph of the electromagnetic radiation that the sensors picked up when Loki came wandering in,” Bruce said, looking up at the blank screen and crossing his arms.

“You did, sir, but Mr. Stark told me to compile the information into a data table and print it out for later use instead of graphing it.”

Bruce crossed his arms and glanced across the lab, where Tony was arguing with one of the robots about something.

“So he told you to disregard my instructions?”

“That’s correct. He said he needed you to work on something else.”

“Umm… what would that be, exactly?”

“I don’t know, sir. He seems to have forgotten.”

Tony jumped when Bruce’s hand landed on his shoulder.

“What?”

“Why did you tell JARVIS to stop working on the Loki stuff?”

Tony blinked, and Bruce could see him trying to assemble the thought process involved. “I told him… oh, right. Because from what Thor has told S.H.I.E.L.D. about Asgardian healing abilities, a couple of gunshot wounds ought to keep Loki lying low for at least a day or two. And because I think there’s something we’re not figuring out here…”

“Like what?”

“Like, why does Loki show up in the living room where we all are, and not down in Thor’s room where Thor and Clint are?”

“Probably not a coincidence,” Bruce said. “It’s not like he just showed up in some random room of the building. And he seemed to be expecting us to be there.”

“And he’s talking about cooperating,” Tony said. “Which I’m thinking is probably Loki-speak for taking advantage of us to get what he wants, but… regardless, it means he needs us for something.”

“So he tried messing around with Clint’s head, and that didn’t get him what he wanted. And then he tried scaring Clint into giving him what he wanted… but what he wants is that Tesseract energy, and I don’t think Clint can just give it to him. So he tried showing up and trying to take it from Clint in person, and that wasn’t working either, even before we interrupted him at it, or else he’d have tried it again.”

“So…” Tony said, holding out his hands.

“So you’re thinking that Loki can’t figure out how to get that energy out of Clint and he needs us to figure out how to do it for him.”

“Bingo.”

“And why would we help him?”

“Well, I’m sure he’s got some kind of offer to make,” Tony said, “but a lot of it comes down to how much damage this stuff is going to do to Clint in the long term and how much damage Loki’s going to do to all of us trying to take it.”

“All of us,” Bruce repeated.

Tony looked at him evenly. Bruce shook his head.

“I know, I know. Loki knows how to set the Other Guy off and he will if he can, and then…”

“I’m not worried about the Other Guy,” Tony said.

“You should be. Just because he likes you and seems to like the rest of the team doesn’t mean he wouldn’t hurt you… he hurt Clint, even though he…”

“He didn’t know he was hurting Clint. That was Loki’s trick. And…”

“Why are you defending him?” Bruce asked, frowning.

Tony shrugged and looked away. “I like him.”

“You like him. The Hulk.”

Tony glanced over at the robots for a moment before answering.

“He’s not just the Hulk. He’s you. You’re him. I…”

“You’re nuts.”

Tony scowled. “Would you just shut up and listen for a second?”

“I thought I was listening.”

“Well… listen more encouragingly.”

Bruce sighed and crossed his arms. “I’m listening.”

“How much… when we’re… you know. How much does the Other Guy know?”

It was Bruce’s turn to look away. “Honestly… it’s hard to keep him completely put away when… things like that are going on. Any time I lose focus, I can’t keep him locked down as well.”

“What does he think of it?”

“Of… are you asking me if the Other Guy likes it when we’re fucking?”

“Umm… yes?”

Bruce lowered his voice, and his face flushed. “All right, you want me to be honest? Yes, he likes it. He knows what’s happening and he likes it. He feels… not everything I feel, but enough of it to like it. That’s one of the only times I have a really hard time keeping him put away in his lockdown in the back of my head… but really, if that freaks you out, or if you’re worried that he’s going to get loose and…”

“I’m not worried,” Tony said. “And… it doesn’t freak me out.”

“It should.”

“Actually… I was kind of hoping.”

“Hoping… what? That the Other Guy watches us? That he likes when we…”

“Yeah. That.”

Bruce stared at him. “It turns you on, doesn’t it.”

Tony tried not to smile. “You might say that.”

“Pervert.”

“You love it.”

Bruce rolled his eyes. “I don’t know about that. I like to keep the Other Guy out of my life… particularly my personal life.”

“I want you to let him watch.”

Bruce shook his head. “Look. I’m not taking any risks that something’s going to trigger him… you and Clint are both nuts and I know Clint would probably give it a shot, but neither of you can handle the Hulk when he’s operating on that kind of…”

“He wouldn’t hurt us.”

Bruce gritted his teeth. “How many times do I have to explain this to you? He won’t hurt you _on purpose_. That doesn’t mean he won’t hurt you. He might just be trying to fuck you and end up killing you. I’m not taking that risk.”

Tony glanced sideways at him. “All right, all right. But… maybe… can you at least sort of once in a while just mention that he’s watching?”

“Jeez…”

“Hey, if you’ve got weird fantasies about the suit or something, I’ll play. Come on.”

“Look, until very recently, having any kind of sex life at all _was_ my fantasy. And now I’m waking up with you _and_ Clint in my bed… my fantasy machine has pretty much exploded. Well…”

Tony’s eyes lit up. “What?”

“There’s a few things I’d like to do to you.”

Tony scowled. “If this has anything to do with all that bondage and submission crap and all that, I already told you I’m not…”

“The Other Guy would really, really like to watch me do those things to you,” Bruce murmured.

Tony closed his eyes. “You fucking manipulative bastard.”

“Your cock’s getting hard just thinking about it, isn’t it.”

“Unfair. So fucking unfair. I tell you one of my fantasies and you turn around and take advantage of it to get one of yours.”

“Sounds perfectly fair to me,” Bruce said, grinning.

“There’s something very wrong here,” Tony complained.

“Yeah, there is. Someone just beat you at your own game of ‘I-run-the-show-because-I’m-Tony-Fucking-Stark’ and you don’t like it.”

“I would argue with you about that, but I seem to be losing blood flow to my brain, since it’s all headed south.”

“Obviously part of you doesn’t mind as much as your brain does.”

Tony shrugged. “Listening to my brain gets me in all kinds of fucked-up situations anyway.”

“What about listening to your dick?”

“That usually just gets me fucked. Or slapped. Or both. And not necessarily in that order.”


	35. Chapter 35

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The scientists discover that the Tesseract may still have a more direct effect on Clint than anyone expected. People in Stark Tower are very, very, very bad at keeping secrets. Extremely bad at it. Like, might as well not even bother trying.

“Gentlemen, I apologize for interrupting, but Dr. Banner and Mr. Stark have requested Thor’s presence in the lab as soon as he is available.”

Clint pulled a pillow over his head. Thor untangled himself and sat up.

“Is there a problem?”

“Not that I know of, but they are conducting research and they feel that your knowledge is necessary for them to proceed.”

Clint glanced out from under the pillow. “They want you to do science?”

Thor smiled. “Apparently. I will attempt to assist them, although there are others who understand the forces they’re dealing with better than I do.”

“Mph. Have fun.”

“Ahh, but you will have to join me, little Hawk.”

“Fuck. Why?”

“Because you are not to be left alone, and if you stay here, I’ll either have to call Steve or Natasha, and I don’t think Steve would feel comfortable seeing you in this particular state, and Natasha is still not tremendously pleased with your antics…”

“Yeah, yeah. Fine. I’ll come with you. There’s places in the lab I can hide and go back to sleep. What time is it, anyway?”

“It’s not even noon.”

“Oh.”

“You know, you might be able to assist them with their work as well.”

Clint rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Sure. The only thing I’m good for is a test subject.”

“You designed all of your own weapons, did you not? That required a high degree of technical skill and a strong knowledge of physics and the dynamics of flight…”

“If they need any help with arrows or things that shoot arrows, I’m their man. Otherwise, might as well not even bother. And everything I know about archery, I know from doing it, not from studying it.”

“You may continue to pretend you’re not clever if it suits you, little Hawk, but everyone here knows otherwise. Now, shall we put clothing on and go find out what we can assist our science brothers with?”

 

 

 

 

Clint found that walking down the hall was considerably more uncomfortable than he had expected it to be, and muttered something about it under his breath, but Thor just grinned and slowed his pace to let Clint keep up.

“Are you a bit sore, my friend?”

“No, I’m not ‘a bit sore’. It’s a little more than a bit.”

“I see. Does that mean you wish for me to refrain from such activities in the future?”

“I didn’t say that…”

Thor chuckled. “You ask for pain, I give you pain, and then you complain about it. What am I to do with you?”

Clint shrugged, relenting. “Seems like whatever you’ve been doing has been working just fine. But you know Bruce and Tony are going so say something about why I can barely walk.”

“Of course. I would expect nothing less. I would suggest that perhaps you point out upon our arrival that Tony’s shirt was probably not inside out when they arrived at the lab earlier and that Bruce appears to have had to change his pants… this should be satisfactory to silence any inappropriate comments they might feel the need to make.”

Clint glanced at him. “How do you know that?”

“I asked JARVIS to see what they were up to while you were washing your face. I prefer to attend a battle properly armed, even if it is only a battle of crude sexual innuendo,” Thor said, grinning.

“Always be prepared,” Clint said, and shrugged.

They arrived at the lab to find Bruce and Tony too busily engaged with something on one of Tony’s projecting screens to bother to notice Clint’s predicament.

“That would be fine if it was just emitting regular electromagnetic wavelengths,” Bruce said, arms crossed, “but it’s obviously not. You did the research yourself. It’s obviously emitting some types of energy that have more to do with particle physics than anything else.”

“What is?” Clint asked.

“The cube,” Tony said, his eyes still on the screen. “And, as a result, all residual energy from the cube. What are we supposed to do about the sub-atomic particles? Most of them haven’t even been formally identified yet. I’m not even sure if my sensors are reading this stuff correctly.”

“You’re talking about the stuff that’s still in my head,” Clint said, frowning.

Neither of them seemed to hear him.

“If we can isolate the electromagnetic wavelengths, at least, maybe we can work on some kind of mechanism to absorb or cancel out those wavelengths…” Tony said.

“And that does nothing for the fact that we’re dealing with something that functions on a sub-atomic level in ways that science doesn’t currently understand,” Bruce argued.

“Is this what you have called me for?” Thor asked.

“Yeah,” Tony said.

“I don’t know that I can explain it in the terms that your science uses. The Tesseract is an intensely concentrated form of powers that are active across all nine realms, and…”

Clint decided to go and find something else to think about for a while. He wandered toward the back of the lab, where he found the two robots busily at work on something at a machining table, so he left them alone and went off to look at the wall of screens displaying the security cameras from all over the building. Nothing interesting going on anywhere that he could see; Natasha and Steve were in the gym, beating the hell out of Steve’s extra-sturdy punching bags, and he felt a mild twinge of jealousy that at one time she wouldn’t have hesitated to strip naked in front of him, but that now he only saw her fully clothed and even Captain Boy Scout got to spar with her in a sports bra and skin-tight shorts. And of course, Captain Boy Scout wasn’t looking terribly modest in his rather transparent t-shirt and…

He had no opportunity to finish the thought, because everything in his head abruptly short-circuited, and there were no more thoughts at all.

 

 

 

 

“Okay, so this is one of the wavelengths we’ve isolated,” Bruce said, keying a command to the computer. “It’s way out of human hearing range and way beyond visible light, but…”

There was a sudden thump, the sound of a body hitting the hard floor of the lab, and all three of them spun around.

“Clint? Where did he go?”

Bruce found him first, stretched out in front of the monitors, his back arched and his limbs stiff and his jaw clenched, contorted half off the floor.

“Fuck,” Tony muttered. “Did we do that?”

“I think so,” Bruce said, crouching down. “Don’t touch him… it’s a seizure. If we’re lucky, this one will stop on its own.”

Even as he spoke, Clint had started to slump back to the floor, still twitching. Bruce exhaled.

“Okay. Good. I’m getting a little worried about shooting any more drugs into him at this point.”

“What happened?” Thor asked.

“I think having the computer broadcasting one of the wavelengths the cube operates on triggered something,” Bruce said.

“So just us doing our work gives him seizures? We could kill him.”

“Probably not,” Bruce said. “But it definitely isn’t a good thing.”

“How far are these frequencies broadcasting?”

“Your lab’s shielded for electromagnetic radiation, right? So nothing should get out of the lab, even if we’re working on something that could set him off.”

“So Clint needs to not be in the lab when we’re working on this particular project,” Tony said.

“Yeah… except that I don’t know how we’re going to test it without him.”

“We don’t have anything to test yet. We’ll figure that out then.”

“Fair enough,” Bruce said, laying a hand on Clint’s shoulder. “Clint? You there?”

Clint blinked and made an uncoordinated effort to swat his hand away.

“Pretty normal, post-seizure,” Bruce said. “He’ll probably sleep for a while. We should get him out of here, though. Thor, you want to take him…”

“You need Thor if you’re going to work out what other kinds of energy this stuff is putting out,” Tony said.

“I need you to help me run the data…”

“I know. And there’s not much I hate as much as hanging around in the lab running data for hours,” Tony said.

Bruce rolled his eyes. “So you’re leaving me and Thor to do the grad student lab work.”

“I’m volunteering myself for something else,” Tony said.

Thor chuckled. “Very well. Since it does not appear that our friend intends to be mobile any time soon, shall I assist you in taking him to Dr. Banner’s room?”

“That’s fine,” Bruce said. “But at least one of you has to come back. I need some help here… this is something nobody has any protocols on dealing with.”

“I promise I will return promptly,” Thor said, bending down to scoop up Clint, who muttered a protest but immediately turned his face into what was becoming the familiar security of Thor’s broad shoulder.

“The lab should be well-insulated enough to keep anything we’re working on in here to get to him there,” Bruce said. “But if he does have anything else going on, have JARVIS call us… if we’re going to be working on this, I don’t know what it could set off in his head, and I don’t want to hurt him.”

“Will do,” Tony said, heading for the door with Thor behind him. “Have fun watching the computers process data for the next couple of hours.”

“Worse than my damn professors,” Bruce muttered, turning back to the computer. “JARVIS, is he always like this?”

“Sir, Mr. Stark has always preferred activity to tedious practices such as analyzing and testing.”

“And how many times has that gotten him in trouble?”

“Depending on how one wishes to define the word ‘trouble’…”

“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”

“If I am not taking excessive liberties in saying so,” JARVIS said, “your presence in the laboratory does seem to have improved the thoroughness and accuracy of his work.”

“That’s because I won’t let him do things his usual half-assed way,” Bruce said.

“Precisely that, Dr. Banner. The robots have mentioned that they approve of being shouted at less frequently as a result of Mr. Stark’s usual errors.”

Bruce chuckled. “He won’t shout at me. He doesn’t want the Hulk in his face.”

“I believe that despite his overall lack of social awareness, he has other reasons besides concern about the Hulk for attempting to behave decently in your presence, Dr. Banner.”

Bruce smiled to himself. “Yeah, yeah. Heart of gold, right?”

“Is that a metaphor, sir?”

“Just me talking to myself. Can you start the computer running that first set of data from when Loki was here last, and see if there are any overlaps with the frequencies we detected?”

“I will see to that immediately.”

 

 

 

Clint woke with a pounding headache and gradually took stock of all the things that were currently wrong with his present situation. First off was the fact that he’d fallen asleep in Thor’s room, while this was clearly Bruce’s room. Second was the realization that he was quite certain he hadn’t bothered to put on any clothes before falling asleep, and now seemed to be fully clothed. He also wasn’t sure what Tony was doing there when Thor wasn’t, sitting at the table and typing away at something on his laptop. And then he realized what had woken him up: Natasha standing at the foot of the bed, her hair still wet from a shower, her arms crossed in that way that said someone had done something she wasn’t amused with. He was pretty sure it wasn’t him, except that he was beginning to have the uncomfortable feeling that something unknown and weird had happened between the time he’d fallen asleep in Thor’s room and waking up now.

“Did you even think about the possibility that you could hurt him messing around like that?”

“If we thought there was a possibility of hurting him, do you think we’d have done it?” Tony asked, sounding slightly insulted. “Like we want to do bad things to him, right?”

She sighed. “All right. I know. I wouldn’t have anticipated that either… oh. Good morning, Clint.”

He scowled at her. “Don’t give me that shit. What happened?”

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Going to sleep in Thor’s room. With Thor there. And that’s not where I am now, and that means that apparently I missed something.”

“Retrograde amnesia isn’t uncommon with grand mal seizures,” Natasha said.

“Wait… what, now?”

“Short-term memory loss about the events immediately before and after a seizure…”

“Yeah. Go back to that seizure part.”

“Bruce and Tony have been testing the types of energy emitted by the Tesseract to see if they can come up with a way to do something useful. They had the computer in the lab broadcasting one of the frequencies of energy that the Tesseract puts out, and apparently that triggered a seizure.”

“Why?”

“Well, for starters, I told you that was a side effect of that stupid drug you shot yourself up with that would take a while to go away… screwing up your neurotransmitters like that will lower your seizure threshold. It also seems likely that because you’ve got residual energy in your body that’s operating on the same energy patterns as the Tesseract, the guys fooling around with those frequencies might have activated that energy.”

“Great. Fucking awesome.”

“Look, as long as you’re not in the lab while they’re working on it, it shouldn’t…”

Clint scowled. “Is there a reason we can’t just have fucking Loki come here and take this shit out of my head and do whatever he wants with it?”

“I can give you a couple of reasons,” Tony said. “Reason number one: Loki isn’t terribly concerned about what happens to you, and if permanently damaging or killing you to get what he wants is the easiest way, he’ll be happy to do it.”

“Reason number two: whatever he wants this energy for, it’s probably something not good,” Natasha said.

“Reason number three: Loki’s probably not in a great mood with us right now,” Tony said.

Natasha gave him a sharp look.

“Why not?” Clint demanded.

“Ask Natasha.”

She looked at the ceiling and shrugged. “I might have pissed him off. A little bit.”

“Only a little bit,” Tony said. “You only shot him a couple of times.”

Clint stared. “Loki was _here_?”

“Yes. We didn’t…”

“And you _shot_ him?”

“Yes.”

Clint grinned. “Good. Fucking bastard. I hope it hurt like hell.”

“Bruce wanted me to shoot him in the balls, but he disappeared before I could get another shot off,” Natasha said.

“Well, if he shows up here next time, shoot him in the balls first,” Clint said. “And if I’m not there, at least make sure JARVIS has a good recording.”

“If you give me a minute to get the suit on, I can do more damage than that,” Tony said.

“Stay out of it,” Natasha said. “Me and Loki… it’s personal. And you don’t need any more going on, anyway.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, you’re already sleeping with two of your five team members… unless you’re fooling around with Thor too and I don’t know about it… and now you want the Hulk to play too, which I’m not even sure would make it count as two or three, besides the fact that it’s incredibly stupid…”

Tony’s face reddened. “Who said anything about the Hulk?”

“A little bird told me.”

“A little JARVIS bird,” Tony muttered. “You fucking traitor.”

“I provide information to individuals with the required clearance.”

“What clearance does she have?”

“I’m a spy, idiot,” she said. “I have any clearance I want. If it makes you feel any better, I don’t really give a shit about your little fantasies… one of my jobs is to monitor any potentially Hulk-triggering situations, and JARVIS registered that as being one.”

“I didn’t say I actually wanted…”

“All I have to say about that is that if you let him out, you have to put him back,” Natasha said. “Clint, I’ll get you something for your headache, and maybe we should see if we can throw in some anti-seizure medication for a few days.”

“Okay… but what was that about Tony and the Hulk?”

She smiled. “Ask Tony about that one. I’ve got things to do.”

 

 


	36. Chapter 36

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony succeeds at behaving like a decent human being in some situations and not so well in others. Something has tipped the scales between Clint and Loki, and Clint wants to find out what it is, even if finding out isn't good for him. Natasha needs something she only trusts one person to give her.

Clint rolled over and swung his feet down to the floor, looking over at Tony. Tony studiously avoided returning his gaze and kept his eyes on his laptop screen.

“What was that…”

“Nothing,” Tony interrupted.

“Oh, no. Natasha doesn’t play that way. If she’s going to take the lid off a can of worms, it’s gonna have worms in it. Big, fat, juicy ones.”

Tony muttered something under his breath. Clint grinned.

“Eventually, you guys are going to learn what I learned a long time ago… you don’t pull one over on Natasha. If you think you did, you’d better be watching your back, because you won’t get away with it. Now, what’s this about you wanting to play with the Hulk?”

Tony scowled. “I didn’t say that.”

“You said something,” Clint pointed out. “You really do need somebody to manhandle you, don’t you?”

“I definitely didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to,” Clint chuckled. “Bruce seems to have a pretty good sense for how to play it as far as the mental part goes, but he’s not strong enough to physically put you where you want to be, unless he uses restraints and stuff, and you’re too paranoid and too much of a control freak to let him. And you _know_ the Hulk could do whatever he wanted and there wouldn’t be anything you could do about it and your little control freak game would just get smashed all to hell…”

“Along with the rest of me,” Tony said. “Look, just because thinking about something turns you on doesn’t mean you think it’s a good idea to go out and do it in real life.”

“No, but it does turn you on thinking about it,” Clint said. “I can see it from over here where I’m sitting. You’re thinking about someone big enough and strong enough to drag you kicking and screaming right out of your comfort zone and do all the stuff you want done but can’t handle willingly letting someone do.”

“Fuck you,” Tony muttered, but Clint could see the tightness in his neck and the clench of his jaw. “You’re a hell of a person to play psychoanalyst, Barton.”

“You think I got to be the S.H.I.E.L.D. agent I am by not being able to read people? And when you’re reading people, sex is always a subtext, especially if they’re attracted to you. Good agents read between the lines and take advantage of it.”

“Are you trying to take advantage of me?”

“What do you have that I want that I can’t get just by asking?”

“True,” Tony said, smiling slightly.

“I can give you that, you know,” Clint said.

Tony froze. “What?”

“What you want. I may not be gigantic and green, but I’m strong and I’m trained and I can put you down and let you fight and make you lose.”

Clint watched as Tony shifted in his chair and swallowed hard. “Bruce… mentioned something about that… possibly not being a very good idea. As in, not a totally safe idea.”

“What did Natasha tell him?” Clint demanded.

“I don’t know, exactly.”

“JARVIS! What did Natasha tell Bruce in regards to this particular topic?”

“Sir, while I am not familiar with the nuances of human sexuality, I am familiar with Agent Romanov’s instructions that all her conversations regarding you be considered confidential unless she specifically orders otherwise.”

“Of course.”

“What would she have told him?” Tony asked.

“That there have been some times when I had somebody in that position… and it turned out kind of ugly. Or really ugly,” Clint said, lowering his head. “That wasn’t… those were missions. Or even if they weren’t… it wasn’t…”

Tony studied his face. “You okay, Clint?”

“They weren’t people… it wasn’t… it wasn’t like here. It wasn’t safe. There wasn’t any safe word to make things stop. There weren’t any rules or any limits. When I was on a mission, these were people I had an open standing order to hurt anyway, and they’d have done the same to me. And when it wasn’t a mission it was just… it was still… it was bad. It wasn’t about sex. It was just about… control. And getting what I was there to get. And getting the fuck out.”

“What did you do?” Tony asked, not sure if he wanted an answer. “I mean… did you…”

“I was never Loki,” Clint said, his voice harsh. “I never forced anybody into anything they didn’t come looking for. I just… you know how you guys are always so nuts about making… making sure I know I’m safe and I can make it stop and no one’s going to hurt me?”

“Yeah. That’s because we want to take care of you, and we want you to feel good.”

“Well, these weren’t people I wanted to take care of. And I didn’t want them to feel good. I wanted them to feel shitty. And I made sure they didn’t feel safe and that they knew I could hurt them and that something bad might really happen to them…”

“But it didn’t, did it.”

“Like I said, I was never Loki. I hurt them, but they came to me wanting to be hurt, the same way I come to you guys. I gave them what they asked for… but I wasn’t there to play safe, sane, and consensual, and I never promised I was.”

“It would be different, here, with us,” Tony said.

“Maybe,” Clint said. “Or maybe Natasha’s right and I really can’t be in control and still _have_ control at the same time.”

“I’m pretty sure you can.”

Clint sighed and flopped back down on the bed. “I shouldn’t even be telling you this stuff. I think my brain’s still scrambled. Maybe I should try to close my eyes for a little while.”

“Probably not a bad idea,” Tony said, and waited until Clint had rolled over to face away from him before he switched his laptop screen over to email and flashed off a quick and only semi-coherent message to Bruce.

Bruce’s response was, at least, coherent, and instructed him to never attempt to have important conversations without someone with some degree of social awareness present. It also instructed him to stay where he was and let Clint sleep a while and to make sure JARVIS called him if anything bad happened. When Tony complained about the vagueness of the team’s definition of “bad”, Bruce shot him back a quote from _Ghostbusters_ and told him to sit tight and find something to keep himself busy other than causing his teammates psychological trauma, so he decided to combine the two.

“JARVIS, start _Ghostbusters_ playing on my laptop, please. Volume at 5, and dim the screen. Dim the lights a little, too.”

“Of course, sir. And if I may say…”

“What?”

“I believe that when Dr. Banner reviews the conversation you had with Agent Barton, he will be rather surprised at the unusual degree of restraint you displayed in curbing your tendencies to make completely inappropriate comments.”

“You saying I actually managed not to say anything impulsively stupid or harmful?”

“I am saying that, yes.”

“Shit. Bruce _will_ be surprised. You should make me an award.”

“I think that might be a bit uncalled-for, sir.”

“You think everything I do is uncalled-for.”

“No, sir, just the vast majority of it.”

“I’m gonna have to agree with JARVIS on that,” Clint said, glancing over his shoulder. “Are you watching that fucking movie _again_?”

“Yes, I am watching this fucking movie again. Go to sleep.”

“Nah. Turn the screen this way a little bit. I love this part at the beginning when they’re investigating at the library.”

 

 

 

When Bruce found out it was movie-watching time, the word apparently spread, and somehow everyone eventually got word that it was now movie-watching and dinner-eating time in the living room. Tony and Clint arrived to find Natasha and Thor laying out containers of Chinese take-out on the counter while Steve rummaged in the cabinet for plates and Bruce flipped through the selection of movies in JARVIS’s memory with the remote control.

“What are we in the mood for?” he asked.

“Something with some good old-fashioned violence,” Tony said.

“How about something without any naked women in it for a change?” Steve suggested.

“Well, considering that about three quarters of Tony’s video library is porn…”

“Is not. Not even half. Well, maybe half. But not three quarters.”

“JARVIS?” Bruce said.

“Depending on whether one defines ‘porn’ only as movies released specifically to be viewed for sexual gratification, or whether one also includes movies that are intended to serve other purposes but also provide sexual gratification…”

“Okay, okay,” Bruce said, waving his hand. “You’re going to make Steve pass out. Should we just let Natasha pick again?”

“I am in agreement,” Thor said. “Especially if it means that we can start eating.”

With the movie selected (Natasha noted that _The Blues Brothers_ filled Steve’s request for a lack of naked women and that she wasn’t in the mood to indulge Tony’s request for gratuitous violence), everyone settled down with plates and took advantage of the only part of the movie that they would be able to enjoy uninterrupted, since everyone’s mouth was full.

Tony, at least, was appreciative that Natasha at least waited till everyone was finished eating before she decided that the stitches in Clint’s head from his visit to the emergency room needed to be removed. No one else seemed to care much; when she dug out the first aid kit and some scissors and tweezers and alcohol pads, Bruce was sitting next to him and didn’t even blink. Clint scowled and hunched down into the couch cushions as she perched behind him, legs on either side of his shoulders, and got to work.

“Oww!” he protested.

“Sissy,” she said. “There’s only ten or eleven more of them.”

“Oww!”

“How many times have you been shot?” Bruce asked.

“With bullets? Seven… oww.”

“You’ve been shot seven times and you’re whining about Natasha pulling stitches out of your head?”

“Yes.”

Tony winced and looked away. “Do you have to do that in the living room?”

“No,” Natasha said, and went on with what she was doing. “I’m assuming no issues since the one earlier today, right?”

“Nope. Been a pretty quiet afternoon.”

“Around here, that probably means some kind of shit is about to hit some kind of fan,” Bruce noted.

Thor burst out laughing. “Who would throw excrement into a fan? That would make a disgusting mess…”

“It’s a metaphor,” Clint said.

“It’s an idiom,” Natasha corrected, and yanked another stitch out. “Almost done.”

He jerked, and her knee bumped into the back of his shoulder. Natasha was much too observant to miss the way he winced at the contact, and she frowned.

“Let me see your back.”

Clint contemplated arguing with her, or at least demanding some privacy, but Bruce and Tony were going to see the welts at some point anyway, Thor was the one who had put them there, and Steve… well, there just wasn’t much to be done about that. So he grabbed the bottom of his shirt and pulled it gingerly over his head, feeling the fabric drag and pull away from the raised, raw marks. He heard Natasha inhale sharply.

“You guys didn’t mention that,” she said.

“We didn’t see that,” Tony said. “He’s had a shirt on since we got hold of him.”

Thor set down his fourth plate of food, an indication of significant concern on his part.

“Did I do something I shouldn’t have?”

“No,” Natasha said, but her voice had an odd tone to it that caught everyone’s attention.

She didn’t seem to notice; her eyes were fixed on Clint’s back and her fingers were running slowly over the welts, light touches that were almost caresses. Clint’s eyes had closed and he was perfectly still, seeming as absorbed in the contact as she was. Bruce was close enough to see the small spark behind her distant stare, a hint of fascination, possibly of desire.

“Umm… are you two going to get a room? Or maybe the rest of us should,” Tony said.

Natasha snapped to alertness with a sharp, startled motion, and Bruce realized she hadn’t even been aware of what she’d been doing, although Tony calling attention to it in his usually tactful manner certainly hadn’t helped the situation. There might have been a trace of red across her cheeks for a flicker of a moment before her mouth settled into a hard line and she swung her legs over the back of the couch and walked toward the door.

“Hey!” Bruce called after her. “Tony was just being a dick…”

“It’s fine,” she said, her voice cool. “I have things to do. Don’t worry about it.”

“If I were you, I’d worry about it,” Clint said, glancing at Tony. “You’re just racking up the points with her, aren’t you?”

“Actually, I’ve been trying to be good. But seriously… that was a little weird. What was…”

“Shut up and watch the movie, Tony,” Clint said.

“Well, it’s like she was…”

“Shut up and watch the movie, Tony,” Clint repeated.

“Look, I’m just asking if she…”

“Shut up and watch the movie before Clint puts you in the hospital, Tony,” Bruce said.

“Fine.”

 

 

 

 

The movie ended, and Steve apparently considered it his duty to collect all the empty plates, since no one else was going to do it and he didn’t consider it polite to leave them for the maids the next morning. Tony had told him several times that dirty plates were by far not the worst things dealt with by the few maids entrusted to tend to the parts of the building Tony personally occupied, but the rest of them had figured out fairly quickly that it was Steve’s way of avoiding potentially awkward after-dinner or after-movie discussions.

This time Thor had managed to disappear somehow as well, although his reasons for doing so were less clear since he did not seem to have any understanding of the concept of awkwardness.

“Guess you’re stuck with us tonight, Clint,” Tony said.

Clint smiled lazily and shrugged. “I can live with that. But if you think after what Thor did to me earlier, I’m going to be up for anything other than sleeping…”

“I think we’d be extremely interested in hearing about what exactly Thor did to you earlier,” Tony said, glancing and Bruce.

“Hmph. Gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell.”

“I think you may be applying a rather generous definition of the word ‘gentleman’,” Bruce said.

Clint flipped his middle finger at him. “You better believe I’m a fucking gentleman, Banner.”

“Well, if you’re not going to tell us dirty stories and nobody’s going to get fucked, we might as well watch another movie before we head off to bed,” Tony said. “And since Steve’s not here to complain and Natasha’s off somewhere plotting her revenge against me…”

“No, we are not watching porn,” Bruce interrupted.

Tony looked toward Clint.

“I’m with Bruce on this one.”

“Fine. JARVIS, put on something with cute fluffy animals and adorable children and musical sing-along numbers.”

“Sir, I don’t…”

Bruce rolled his eyes. “Search the movie list and find whichever one has the highest percentage of screen time involving explosions, and put that on.”

JARVIS sounded slightly relieved. “Yes, sir. Right away.”

 

 

 

 

By the end of the second movie, Clint was dozing with his head on Bruce’s shoulder, and Bruce was headed the same way, so when Tony suggested another movie, he found himself unceremoniously grabbed by the arms and forcefully hauled off to Bruce’s room. He protested that he had too much energy left for sleeping, but somehow once he was dragged into bed and wrapped up snugly between a sleepy Clint and an equally sleepy Bruce, he gradually surrendered. It was odd, he thought, that after he’d tried every white noise generator and other type of noise that was supposed to help lull him to sleep through his insomnia, the thing that seemed to work better than anything else was the feeling of soft breath against his neck and strong arms draped lazily over him.

 

 

Clint wasn’t sure how he had gone from Bruce’s warm bed to standing on a vast, empty plain, the wind curling and blasting past his body, the ground scoured bare of anything but rocky soil. He looked up at the gray-green sky overhead and tried to think.

“Hello, little Hawk.”

He spun around to find Loki standing with arms crossed, dressed in his full battle armor complete with horned helmet, the wind twining through his sleek hair. There was a knowing smirk on his face as he stood waiting for Clint to take everything in, but when Clint met his eyes, the smirk abruptly vanished.

“Heard you stopped by,” Clint said.

“Yes. And I might have had something of value to tell you, if that red-headed harpy hadn’t taken it upon herself to interfere.”

Clint rocked back on his heels. Someone without Clint’s experience and training might not have been able to see the hint of unease and confusion behind Loki’s expressionless face, but Clint could see it, and they both knew he could.

“You don’t have anything for me,” Clint said.

“You’re a fool. You need me, Agent Barton. I don’t know what your friends think they’ve discovered playing games in their laboratory, but they have no grasp of what they’re dealing with. Your science has no answers for…”

“What are you afraid of?”

Loki stopped and looked past him, toward the blank horizon. “What have I to be afraid of?”

“Something’s different,” Clint said, pressing now, taking a step closer and then another. “I can see it. You feel like telling me what it is? Because even if you don’t, we’re going to find out.”

“You don’t have…”

“You’re right. I don’t. But _we_ do. When you first showed up in this world and you took over my head, it was just you and me. It’s not just you and me anymore. I’ve got friends on my side, and last time I checked, you’ve got nobody on yours.”

“You know nothing,” Loki said dismissively, turning away.

“I know you don’t want to look me in the face all of a sudden,” Clint said. “I want to know why.”

“I do not owe you answers. I owe you nothing.”

“You called me here to chat,” Clint said. “What did you want to say?”

“I have nothing to say to you, arrogant mortal,” he snapped, and with a sweep of his cloak he was gone.

 For a moment, Clint stood alone, listening to the wind, and then he was back in Bruce’s room, sitting up abruptly and making Tony and Bruce mutter with confused concern in the dark.

“What’s going on?” Bruce asked. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Clint said. “But I need you guys to zap me again.”

“What?”

“You know… with the energy wavelengths you were messing with on the computer earlier.”

“You mean the ones that disrupted the electrical activity in your brain and gave you a seizure that could have seriously harmed you?” Bruce asked, rubbing his face.

“Yeah. Those ones. I need you to do it again. Except with more.”

“Have you lost your fucking marbles?” Tony muttered, half-awake.

“No. Just…”

“Nobody’s zapping anyone with anything at two in the morning,” Bruce said, tugging Clint back down. “I’m not even going to try to figure out what you’re talking about until I’ve had coffee and breakfast.”

“I’m serious, Bruce. You guys have to do it again. It did something…”

“Yeah. No kidding.”

“No… it did something we don’t know about. It had to have been that.”

Tony yawned. “I’ll zap you with whatever the fuck you want if you go back to sleep till some kind of decent hour.”

Clint sighed and settled back down, still wide awake.

“And by the way,” Bruce murmured, “if you try to sneak out and down to the lab to try zapping yourself after we fall asleep, JARVIS will wake everyone up.”

“Fuck,” Clint complained, and figured that under the circumstances, he might as well at least try to go back to sleep.

 

 

“Yes, he is awake,” JARVIS said, his voice following Natasha across the darkened living room. “From my observations, it does not appear that Asgardians spend much time sleeping.”

“What about everybody else?”

“The others are all sleeping, Agent Romanov. Would you like me to alert Thor that you would like to speak with him?”

“No,” she said. Somehow, she expected that he already knew.

“Agent Romanov…”

“What?”

“Am I to assume that after the argument with Captain Rogers earlier, you would prefer that this visit remain confidential?”

“Everything I do is confidential, JARVIS.”

She knocked on the door. She could hear footsteps inside, surprisingly light for such a large man, and then the door slid open. Thor smiled cheerfully down at her, dressed in plain gray shorts and a T-shirt and holding a book, which he set aside as he stepped back to motion her inside.

The door closed, and she stood, unwilling to turn around and talk now that she was here.

“The only people I used to trust were Coulson and Clint,” she said. “Before them, I didn’t trust anyone. And now Coulson’s gone, and Clint…”

“Has his own problems to solve,” Thor agreed quietly.

“Can I trust you?”

“You trust me with Clint.”

“Yeah. I do. So…”

Thor’s voice rumbled in his chest. “I would not wish to upset my friend Steve.”

“Don’t worry. I already did that part,” she said, turning to face him with a wry smile. “I told him what he was getting into with me, but I guess he didn’t believe me.”

“What did you tell him?”

“That I was broken and I always would be, and nothing and no one was ever going to be able to fix me, no matter how hard they tried.”

“And he tried.”

“Of course he did. He’s Captain fucking America.”

“Tell me what you came here for, Natasha,” Thor said slowly.

She forced down the voices of protest, closed her eyes, and held out her arms.

“Take it all away for a little while. Please.”

There was silence for a moment, and then she could hear Thor moving, and a moment later, big hands were gently but very thoroughly binding her outstretched wrists with straps of soft leather. A flash of panic crept up her back, but it was followed by a sudden rush of relief.

“Are you well? Do you want me to stop?”

“No… don’t stop. I’m fine. Just… it’s been a long time. A really long time.”

“I’ll do my best to give you what you need, my friend.”

“You’re doing a pretty good job so far.”


	37. Chapter 37

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce and Tony find Clint's sudden enthusiasm for playing with electricity a bit concerning. And since Natasha and Thor both seem to be unavailable (for some reason or another), they're just going to have to find something else to keep him busy. Also, if you ask JARVIS smartass, sarcastic questions, guess what kind of answers you get?
> 
> (NOTE: there is apparently something wrong with the formatting tonight. I hope this is readable)

“Where is everybody?” Tony asked, looking around the living room and kitchen. “Steve’s always up by now and Thor should be in here cleaning out the cabinets of everything edible.”

Clint rolled his eyes. “I thought we were going to find Natasha so you could ask her about…”

“She’s going to say no, anyway,” Bruce said. “She’s not going to think that us messing with your brain any more than we already have is a good idea either.”

“In fact, nobody seems to think this is a good idea except you,” Tony pointed out. 

“Well, where’s Natasha?” Clint demanded. 

JARVIS’s voice broke into the conversation with its usual composure. “Agent Romanov has stated that today is her day off.”

“What? Since when do we get days off?”

“She has stated that today is her day off and she is not to be disturbed unless someone’s life is in immediate danger.”

Tony crossed his arms. “Clint wants to electrocute his head and give himself seizures. Does that count?”

“No, sir. First of all, Agent Barton is not current in the proximity of anything that could injure him. Second, I am capable of shutting off the electricity to any outlet or appliance in the building if he attempts to use it for such purposes. And third, you and Dr. Banner are currently in Agent Barton’s immediate presence, and it seems reasonable that the two of you together should be able to manage the situation without requiring Agent Romanov’s assistance.”

“Thanks, JARVIS. You’re a ton of help. Where the hell is everybody else?”

“If by ‘everybody else’ you mean Captain Rogers and Thor, Captain Rogers is in the gym and has been there since 4:30AM. He does not appear to wish to be disturbed. And Thor is in his room and also has noted that he does not wish to be disturbed unless an emergency necessitates it.”

“Since when does Thor put up the ‘do not disturb’ sign?” Bruce asked. 

“Since he decided he did not want to be disturbed,” JARVIS retorted. 

Bruce glanced at Tony. “Did you have to program him to be such a smartass?”

“Dr. Banner, my artificial intelligence programming is adaptive and allows for adjustments in protocol to address situations as needed.”

“So you’re saying that if we’re being sarcastic assholes, your adaptive programming allows you to adjust to be a sarcastic asshole too?” Bruce asked. 

“Something like that, yes. But regardless…”

“Look,” Clint said. “These two won’t let me do the thing with the electromagnetic wavelengths again unless Natasha says they can, so I need to talk to her.”

“First of all, she is not available. Second of all, she is highly unlikely to agree to your plan, so…”

“Well, I’ll go bang on her door till she decides she’s fucking available,” Clint said. 

Tony and Bruce exchanged a quick look. 

“Clint, you’re…” Tony attempted. 

“What? I’m fine.”

“No…” Bruce said slowly. “You’re really, really wired and it’s not normal.”

“How do you know what’s normal? I’ve had a concussion or some other head injury pretty much the entire time you’ve known me.”

“He has a point,” Tony said. 

“If I may,” JARVIS said, “I have reviewed Agent Barton’s files and this behavior is noted to be entirely normal when he is actively engaged in a mission.”

“You’re not on a mission, Clint,” Tony said. 

“I am on a fucking mission,” Clint snapped. “I told you. Loki saw something he didn’t like last night. He had a reason for dragging me to see him, and then something shut everything down. There was something he didn’t like at all, and whatever his plan was, he’s having to rethink it. So I am on a mission and my mission is to fuck up his plan, and him, in every way I possibly can. So can we please go to the lab now?”

“No,” Bruce said. 

“Fine. I’m going to go be a pain in Natasha’s ass until she says it’s…”

“I wouldn’t advise that, Agent Barton,” JARVIS said. 

“Why not?”

“Because all of the private rooms are fitted with security features to deter unwelcome visitors from attempting to enter by force, and if you do, I will have to activate said security features, per my protocol.”

“What kind of security features?” Bruce asked, glancing at Tony. 

“Tasers,” Tony muttered.

“Perfect,” Clint said. 

“Damnit… JARVIS, deactivate that function until I tell you otherwise. Clint’s looking to go set it off on purpose now.”

Clint muttered something under his breath. 

“Yes, sir,” JARVIS said. “Would you prefer me to activate the secondary deterrent security feature?”

“Which would be…”

JARVIS managed to sound slightly weary. “Pepper spray, sir.”

“That’ll work. If you feel like going ahead and getting a face full of pepper spray, Clint, be my guest.”

“I don’t think you guys understand…”

Bruce crossed his arms. “I don’t think you understand. We are not S.H.I.E.L.D. You are not Agent Barton and you are not on a mission. You’re Clint, and we’re your friends, and our job is to keep you from breaking yourself doing anything else stupid.”

Clint sighed and flopped backwards onto the couch, staring at the ceiling. 

“Besides,” Bruce said, “I have another project for you.”

“No,” Tony said quickly. 

Bruce grinned. Clint looked up and raised his eyebrows.

“Not interested?”

“You don’t want to let the Other Guy down, do you?” Bruce said. “Besides, all the really interesting stuff is in my room, so…”

Clint slumped back into the couch. “It’s fine. He’s afraid of me. He probably should be.”

“I’m not,” Tony insisted. “I just have an aversion to being ordered around…”

“You’re a control freak,” Bruce said. 

“Leave it alone,” Clint said, standing and heading for the door. “I’m going… fuck. I don’t know. Somewhere. I’m not… I’ve played that game enough. I don’t want to play it with you guys.”

“Which game, Clint?” Bruce said slowly. 

“The game where people are afraid of me, and they’re only with me because they have to be or think they’re going to get something out of it.”

“This isn’t that game,” Bruce said. “Tony’s not afraid of you. I’m not afraid of you. We trust you.”

“No, you don’t, or you’d…”

He was abruptly silenced by Tony’s hands on his arms, spinning him around. His instinctive reaction was to lash out in defense, but instead of being on the receiving end of a blow he found himself shoved back against the wall and kissed, hard and thoroughly. 

Not sure whether it was Tony or himself or the whole situation that he didn’t trust, he kept his hands at his sides. After a moment, Tony pulled back and looked at him. 

“You know, even I know it would be polite to respond to that.”

“You’re lucky I’m not responding by putting you unconscious on the floor,” Clint muttered. 

Tony slid his knee along the inside of Clint’s leg, his mouth working at the soft joining of neck and shoulder, and Clint exhaled and tipped his head back. 

“Does that feel like I’m afraid of you?”

Clint’s hips shifted almost involuntarily and he found himself pressed against Tony’s body, feeling his cock hardening through his jeans, and then his hands came up to grab Tony by the shoulders and pull him in, kissing him hard enough to draw a small, surprised sound out of him. 

“Sorry,” he murmured. 

“That wasn’t a complaint,” Tony said. 

“You don’t want to do this.”

“Yeah. I’m pretty sure I do,” Tony said, his mouth working against Clint’s neck again and feeling him shiver. “Bruce won’t let you hurt me. You know that.”

Clint nodded slightly. 

“Well, then…”

He wasn’t quite sure what he was expecting, but he hadn’t realized exactly how strong Clint was and how fast he could move. He found himself falling back onto the couch with Clint on his lap, each one of his wiry archer’s hands holding one of Tony’s wrists in a grip that was solid enough to be unbreakable but not tight enough to be uncomfortable and pinning them over his shoulders against the back of the couch.

“Hi,” Clint said, but before Tony could answer him, if there was a sensible answer to that, Clint silenced him with his mouth. 

Bruce’s voice slid between them, even and steady. 

“Clint, you’re still listening to me, right?”

Clint drew back, turned toward Bruce as he settled down onto the couch beside them. His eyes seemed to take a moment to focus, and his voice was breathless, but controlled. 

“Yeah. I’m listening.”

“Okay. Just making sure.”

“Can I get back to getting Tony’s fucking clothes off now, please?”

“Of course.”

Tony intended to protest that this was the damn living room, but since he didn’t normally have any aversion to sex in inappropriate locations, that wasn’t a very good excuse, and then his shirt was gone, and Clint’s was too, because his skin was very hot against Tony’s, and he could feel his heartbeat, and that exposed lots of skin for Clint’s mouth to get to work on. 

“Are you just going to sit there?” Clint asked, glancing up at Bruce, right around the time he reached the soft skin above Tony’s navel and Tony was squirming and cursing under his breath. 

“For now,” Bruce said. 

“Good,” Clint said. “Then you can hold these.”

He shoved Tony’s wrists into Bruce’s hands and, with Bruce securing them, grabbed his legs and swung them onto the couch so he could set to work removing his pants. 

Tony blinked and found himself with his head in Bruce’s lap. Bruce chuckled. 

“You okay?”

“Have you heard me complain?”

“Actually, this might be the longest period of time I’ve known you to be conscious and not complaining about…”

“Fuck!”

Bruce’s eyes flashed from Tony’s face to see what Clint was up to that would deserve that kind of response, and he found that Clint had managed to remove what was left of any obstructive clothing and that his mouth was now sliding over Tony’s cock. 

“Fuck,” Bruce muttered. “That’s…”

Clint looked up at him and grinned. “You enjoying the show, Bruce?”

“You could say that.”

“I need some lube.”

“I’ll have to let go…”

Clint chuckled. “He’s not going anywhere… not while I’m doing this.”

To make his point he lowered his head and dragged his tongue up the length of Tony’s cock, drawing a shaky gasp. When Bruce let go of his hands, they made no effort to extricate him from the situation and instead wrapped themselves in Clint’s short, dark blond hair. 

“Tony, I would be flat-out shocked if there wasn’t lube stashed somewhere in this living room,” Bruce said. 

“End table… bottom drawer… under the magazines.”

“Which end table?”

“Fuck! One of the end tables!” Tony whined, twisting as Clint applied just a hint of teeth dragging over sensitive skin. 

“You seem to be in some kind of hurry all of a sudden.”

“Damnit, Bruce…”

“All right, all right. I’m looking.”


	38. Chapter 38

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bruce and Tony proceed with their attempt to distract Clint, and succeed in being distracting, although possibly not in exactly the way they had planned. Clint gets an idea, and this is not a good thing, because now Clint has a mission, and this is definitely not a good thing.

Tony wasn’t very clear on exactly how he had ended up at Bruce and Clint’s mercy, except that he had some vague recollection of (possibly stupidly) agreeing to it and (possibly even more stupidly) maybe being the one that started it. He wasn’t going to say anything about it at the moment, though, because if he did, it might make Clint stop doing whatever he was doing with his mouth to Tony’s cock, and that would not be at all acceptable, so he kept his mouth shut. After all, he was the one who’d told Clint that it would be different if he was here, with his friends and people who knew how to take care of him… but he hadn’t really considered at the time that he was going to be the guinea pig for finding out whether that was true. Not that it mattered at this point… and Bruce was there, his hands on Tony’s shoulders now that he’d apparently located the lube Clint had sent him off to find, and something in the back of his head told him that there was no way that Bruce was going to let anyone get hurt.

“You all right, there?” Bruce asked.

Tony managed to give him something like a thumbs-up, since he didn’t think he could put any useful words together. Clint sat up, grinning, and Tony whined in protest.

“You didn’t just want me to keep doing that, did you?” Clint asked.

“You could have kept doing that all day,” Tony said.

“Well, we’ve got other things to do,” Clint said. “Shame we don’t have all of Bruce’s interesting toys in here, but I’m not feeling like relocating at the moment.”

“This is sort of the living room,” Tony muttered.

“And that matters because…”

“Umm…”

Whatever reason he had for complaining about the location disappeared as abruptly as Clint’s slick fingers slid into him, without warning or teasing. The part of Tony’s brain that was always taking notes found itself reaching through the distraction to document the differences between Clint and Bruce, between Bruce’s patient, slightly uncertain, but intensely focused work and Clint’s quick, certain, expert, and efficient motions, his fingers aimed to hit exactly the right places and to hook at exactly the right angle to send sharp spikes of pleasure up his spine. There was something very slightly unsettling about exactly how good Clint seemed to be at this, or perhaps it was how it seemed like he’d practiced this just like he’d practiced his other techniques, perfected the motions until they would have the required result no matter who he used them on.

Bruce saw the flash of something uncertain and not totally comfortable across Tony’s face as Clint pulled his hand back and reached down to slick his cock. He calculated for a moment the potential cost to Clint of his interfering now versus the potential cost to Tony if he didn’t, and on balance, Tony had been in weirder places, and Bruce ran a reassuring hand through his hair and kept silent.

Clint hooked one of Tony’s legs over the back of the couch and his other leg over his arm to lift it up and back, rocking Tony’s hips up to a convenient angle for him to press in. Tony inhaled sharply, and Bruce glanced down at his face again, but although his eyes were tightly closed in concentration, he was sliding his body toward Clint, not away from him, and his hands had reached up to lock onto Clint’s hips and pull him in.

“Good,” Bruce murmured, not sure which one of them he was talking to.

“Fuck yes it’s good,” Tony managed in reply, all in one rushed breath before Clint pulled back and then slid in again, setting up a hard rhythm of thrusts that shoved Tony back into Bruce’s lap.

Bruce’s eyes couldn’t decide which one of them to settle on, trying to keep track of both, but Clint’s intense concentration, almost as if he had lost himself more in his work than anything else, and the flash of concern and unease in Tony’s eyes was enough.

Clint felt a hand tangle in the hair above his ear, but he was too focused to worry about whose hand it was, until that hand gripped tightly, and then twisted uncomfortably hard, and a voice was saying his name. He forced himself to still his motions, catch his breath, and open his eyes, and he realized the hand gripping his hair and pulling his head up was Bruce’s, and that Bruce had fixed him with a look that brought him fully back to reality.

“Did I do something wrong?” he asked, confused, trying to look down at Tony, but Bruce pulled his head up again.

“No. You’re fine. I just need you to listen.”

“I’m listening.”

“You’re not on a mission. You’re not doing this because you have to or because you need something. You’re doing this because it’s me and it’s Tony and right now, your job isn’t to be good at what you do. Your job is to be here, with us, and make it good for Tony. It doesn’t matter what you know works on everyone you use it on. Be here and figure out what works for him.”

Clint exhaled slowly, trying to let his brain shift. This was a mode he didn’t really know how to operate in… not from a position of control, anyway. But he knew what it was like to be on the other side of it, and he knew, if only from recent experience, what it felt like to have someone focused entirely on your pleasure.

“I can… yeah. I can do that,” he murmured.

Bruce released his hair, and Clint immediately arched himself over and down until he could catch Tony’s lips in a hard kiss, and Bruce smiled, because he knew and apparently Clint did too what it did to Tony to be kissed like that. And apparently that meant everything was going to be okay, because he felt Tony’s shoulders slump back against his legs and heard the low moan of something that was both pleasure and relief.

And despite Coulson and Fury’s complaints that Clint couldn’t follow instructions to save his life, he apparently had taken these instructions to heart, because apparently it was now his entire purpose to drive Tony completely out of his mind, and he did that with the same single-minded determination he did everything else, until eventually Tony was entirely reduced to an exhausted and boneless and only semi-coherent state sprawled across the couch. Clint sat back and gave Bruce a breathless but pleased grin, and that was the moment that Thor decided to stroll across the living room.

Bruce and Clint turned to look at him; Tony seemed to be largely beyond caring about such things anymore. Thor gave them a cheerful nod and turned toward the kitchen, opened the fridge, and headed back toward the elevator with two bottles of purple sports drink.

“That’s Natasha’s,” Clint said.

“I know,” Thor agreed mildly, and disappeared into the hall.

Tony opened his eyes. “Was that Thor?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“You all right?”

“Definitely. Absolutely. Very all right. Except that we haven’t even had breakfast and I’m ready to go back to bed.”

Bruce chuckled. “Let’s see if we can all get some of our clothes on, and you can head back up to my room and get a shower, and Clint and I will be up in a few minutes with some breakfast.”

“Perfect. Except that means I have to move.”

“If you spend the whole morning laying naked and covered with come on the living room couch, it might be somebody less laid-back than Thor that wanders in here next.”

“Yeah. I don’t need another maid to quit this week. All right… where the hell are my pants?”

 

Tony stumbled off to Bruce’s room, and Bruce and Clint made their way to the kitchen, but Clint’s mind was a long way from breakfast.

Natasha was off somewhere and didn’t want to be disturbed unless somebody was dying. In and of itself, that wasn’t unusual, but Thor was also on “do not disturb” status, and that was unusual, unless he was with Clint, which he definitely wasn’t at the moment. And Clint was fairly certain that Thor did not have a particular fondness for purple sports drinks after strenuous exercise, but he knew exactly who did. And if he put those things together, it added up to a situation where the only two people who understood him well enough to know what he was capable of were both extremely occupied and unlikely to be in a position to respond quickly.

“What are you thinking about?” Bruce asked, as he set cereal bowls on the tray Clint was holding as he stared off into space.

“Nothing.”

Bruce asked him something else, but he wasn’t listening. Sure, it was probably about the whole thing in the living room, and yeah, that was probably something that at any other time he would have listened to Bruce talk about, seeing as how Bruce seemed to have managed to get them all through it unscathed. But right now, he was planning. Opportunities were not to be missed.

“Okay… I think that’s everything,” Bruce said, taking the tray. “You want to grab the milk?”

“Yeah. Sure.”

He followed along behind Bruce until they were in the hall and about to step into the elevator.

“Damn… I wanted some orange juice. I’m going to run back and grab some.”

Natasha would have called him out on it instantly. But Bruce wasn’t Natasha, didn’t know how to be on guard and prepared for anything for every minute of every day, and Clint’s voice was easy and calm.

“Okay. Hurry up.”

Clint darted back toward the living room, holding his breath. Bruce was still standing by the elevator doors in the hall, with a view of only the back corner of the living room. Clint headed toward the kitchen, veering quickly to grab Tony’s laptop where it was sitting on the coffee table, and then hopped up onto the counter, grabbed a butter knife out of the dish strainer, and popped the vent cover above the stove off its hinges. It fell to the floor with a noisy clatter, but Clint didn’t care; it was only another heartbeat or two ahead of Bruce deciding to come check on him on his own, and by the time Bruce made it around the corner, Clint had shoved the laptop up into the vent, pulled himself up after it, and was gone.

“Clint, what the hell was that… oh, fuck. JARVIS!”

“Yes, Dr. Banner?”

“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me he was climbing into the vent?”

“My protocols do not require me to announce when people climb into vents, sir.”

“Fuck… get Natasha.”

“That is not possible at the moment, Dr. Banner.”

“It’s Clint…”

“She is not available, Dr. Banner. In fact, she is extremely not available and will continue to be for some time.”

“Well, then, tell Tony what happened and… you can’t track him in the ventilation system, can you.”

“No, sir. No sensors were installed inside of the air vents.”

“Great. If he’s headed for the lab, do not let him in there.”

“Protocol has already established that Agent Barton is not to have unsupervised access to the lab, Dr. Banner. The system will not open the doors for him…”

“What if he comes through the fucking ventilation system?”

“Well, sir, there are no locks installed on the ventilation system, so I have no control over his access to that mode of entry.”

“Shit. I’m going to the lab. Send Tony there.”

 

Clint kicked the vent cover off its screws and lowered himself to the narrow ledge that ran across the back wall of the lab, only a few feet below the ceiling. It wasn’t a very wide perch, but he’d had worse. He quickly located a corner where he was hidden from view behind part of one of the cranes that moved the suit and other heavy equipment around the lab, tucked himself in so he could brace his knees, and propped the laptop on them. He heard Bruce and Tony below him, but he tuned out their voices and focused on the computer screen. Natasha had secured the building’s systems from outside interference, but she always left herself access from the inside, and Clint was her partner and knew most of the tricks she used to do it.

“I’m sure he was headed here,” Bruce said.

“Sir,” JARVIS replied, “I have not detected Agent Barton’s presence in the lab on any cameras.”

“Well, he’d have to come down here and mess with the computers to do any damage,” Tony said.

“Even if he has your laptop?”

“Fuck.”

“Where did you leave your laptop?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Sir, you left it on the coffee table in the living room.”

“Okay. I’m going to get it…”

“That would be pointless, sir.”

“Why?”

“Because Agent Barton took it with him.”

“So he’s hidden somewhere and he has access to the main computer system and he’s fucking S.H.I.E.L.D.-trained as a hacker and he wants to do dangerous things to his brain and it was our job to keep him from doing it and we completely failed at it?”

“Not necessarily, sir. He has not actually done anything dangerous to his brain yet.”

Yet, Clint thought to himself, looking around. It wouldn’t be a great idea to give himself a seizure while he was perched on a beam barely wide enough to wedge himself onto. He was going to have to wait until Bruce and Tony went away, then find a perch where he could secure himself in case he did manage to successfully trigger something in his head.

  
That was fine. He could wait. He could wait for days, if he had to. He was Agent Barton, and he was on a mission, and that meant that he would wait. He would do whatever needed to be done.


	39. Chapter 39

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Natasha and Thor remain occupied, Bruce and Tony try to figure out what to do about their missing archer, and Steve makes some suggestions that might be good ones if Tony would shut up and listen.

With Tony’s repeated insistence that he was JARVIS’s boss and not Natasha or anybody else, he managed to convince the AI to reluctantly interrupt whatever the rest of the team was up to and notify them of the situation. 

Thor cursed in as many languages as he fluently spoke when JARVIS’s voice came through the speakers, muted but still audible. In the dim light he saw Natasha stir on the bed, tugging at the restraints, and considering how long it had taken him to calm her and work her to a state of mind where she had finally passively accepted those restraints instead of instinctively fighting them, he did not appreciate the interruption whatsoever. 

“Did he say something about Clint?” she asked, and her voice, though still slurred, was clearer than it had been and in proper English instead of the muddled and half-coherent Russian she’d lapsed into at some point. The fact that Thor didn’t speak any Russian didn’t really matter, since her English wouldn’t have been any more coherent at the time, but it was another sign that she was dragging herself back up from the place he’d spent a considerable amount of time helping her get to. 

“Everything is fine,” he said. 

“What… is Clint…”

He kneeled over her, pressing her back down to the bed. Her eyes, huge and dark, found his face and looked for confirmation that his words were true. 

“Clint is fine.”

“Why did JARVIS…”

“Because Bruce and Tony are overly excitable,” Thor murmured. “Clint is a grown man, and a highly trained one. He grows tired of having his decisions made for him and has taken it upon himself to make some of his own, and Bruce and Tony are displeased with this.”

She slumped back, letting herself trust him, content in her certainty that if Thor really thought Clint’s life was in danger, he would be the first person racing to protect him. 

“Is he doing something stupid again?” she asked, struggling to put words together. 

“Probably. But perhaps, all things considered, this is a good time to allow him to.”

“What if he hurts himself?”

“Then it will be no one’s fault but his own. You are not his keeper.”

“I’m… his partner.”

“That does not make you responsible for his behavior. Now… enough talk. I am far from finished with what I had planned for you.”

He wasn’t sure whether she would be ready or willing to go back under yet, with thoughts of Clint being in danger still in her head, but apparently she was willing at least to believe him, because she closed her eyes and turned her head and went limp against the restraints again, her breathing slowing back down as she surrendered.

 

“Thor did not say that,” Tony snapped. 

JARVIS managed to sound both weary and slightly insulted. “I am not programmed to confabulate falsehoods, sir.”

“Thor said to let him do it?”

“Basically, yes.”

Bruce frowned and looked around the lab. “What are we supposed to do, just go away and let him do whatever he wants and possibly electrocute himself or overload his central nervous system and stop his heart or…”

Tony covered his ears. “Okay, okay.”

“I believe Thor’s point,” JARVIS said, “is that you are welcome to try to stop him but it is highly likely that he will do whatever he intends to do regardless of your attempts.”  
“He’s probably right about that part,” Bruce said. 

“So what do we do?” Tony asked. “I’m not just letting him do it.”

“Yeah. But I’m not sure we have a choice. He’s trained for this, remember? We’re not.”

“Whatever. I’m not leaving the lab until I know where he is and what he’s up to.”

“I’m not going anywhere either,” Bruce said. “So, since we’re here, pull up a chair and let’s see if we can come up with some plans for making it a little harder for people to take uninvited tours of the ventilation system again.”

The lab doors slid open, and Steve peered in with some uncertainty. 

“Can I come in?”

“Of course you can come in.”

“Well, I wasn’t sure if you were doing anything dangerous.”

“If I’m doing anything dangerous, JARVIS will warn you,” Tony said. “That’s probably the only reason Pepper’s still alive. What’s up?”

“Heard JARVIS talking about Clint going AWOL. Thought I’d see if there was anything I could do to help.”

“Not really,” Bruce said. “We don’t know what to do either, Thor seems to think he’s going to do whatever he wants anyway and we’re wasting our time, and Natasha’s maintaining radio silence.”

Steve’s face changed and his eyes dropped. 

“What? You know what she’s up to?” Tony asked. “Because we could really fucking use her help right about now and apparently she’s busy.”

“She’s busy,” Steve said quietly. 

“Wait… what? By herself? Not… she’s not with Thor, is she? What the hell?”

“Tony,” Bruce warned, as Steve’s face reddened. 

“No… seriously. What…”

“Tony!” Bruce said sharply. 

Steve’s face turned even redder and he muttered something under his breath. 

“Ignore him,” Bruce said. “He’s an idiot.”

“Am not.”

“Seriously? Are you four?”

Tony scowled and turned back to the computer screen. Bruce motioned Steve off toward the opposite end of the lab, and Steve followed him silently. 

“So… what’s going on?” he asked. 

Steve shrugged. “She said she warned me.”

“Yeah. They always do. Did you do something…”

“No. It’s something I wouldn’t do.”

Bruce frowned. “You wouldn’t… is this one of your time warp hang-ups, or…”

“I wouldn’t hurt her.”

“Oh.”

“I won’t hurt anyone for no reason, on purpose… even if they want me to. I won’t. I couldn’t do that. I don’t even know how. And I don’t understand why, after how many times she’s been hurt…”

Bruce shook his head. “It’s sort of not something you can really explain, I guess. I don’t want anybody to hurt me… but I guess I can see why someone who’s carrying the kind of weight that Clint and Natasha carry might need someone to take it off for a while.”

Steve shrugged. “I’d still never do it.”

“Yeah. I know. Look, why don’t you come and sit down with me and Tony and see if you can help us come up with some ideas for keeping random S.H.I.E.L.D. agents out of our ventilation system?”

“Only if you promise to keep Tony from going on about…”

“If he says anything else about it, I promise I will kick him in the shins as hard as I’m physically capable of.”

Steve managed half a smile. “Okay.”

 

 

Steve sat quietly for a while, listening to Tony and Bruce and JARVIS discuss the logistics of rigging the ventilation system and other areas of the building with sensors of various sorts, but eventually Bruce noticed the expression on his face. 

“What?” he asked. 

Steve shrugged. “Nothing, really.”

“No… just because this is the lab doesn’t mean we don’t want to hear what you have to say,” Bruce said, ignoring Tony’s sideways glance that suggested that in Tony’s mind that was exactly what it meant. 

“You’ve never been soldiers. Or active duty,” Steve said. 

Tony rolled his eyes. “Don’t start that shit again…”

“Shut up,” Bruce said. “Okay… what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that you’re not operating the same way Clint is operating right now,” Steve said. “To you guys, he’s your friend and what he’s planning to do could hurt him and you want to keep that from happening, and he won’t let you, and that’s frustrating. But you’re not thinking like he is. He’s on duty. Whatever he’s trying to do, it’s important to him and it’s what he has to do. You’re not thinking about whether you might get hurt or what the cost might be. It’s your job. It’s your duty.”

“So that means he has to be a pain in the ass when we’re trying to help him?” Tony asked. 

“From where he’s standing, you’re not trying to help him,” Steve said.

Bruce shook his head. “We’re treating him like the enemy.”

“We’re keeping him from hurting himself.”

Bruce raised an eyebrow. “How well does it work for you when people put leashes on you in the name of keeping you from hurting yourself?”

“Not tremendously well, usually,” Tony admitted. 

“All it does is piss you off and make you that much more determined to do it anyway.”

“Pretty much,” Tony said, glancing at Steve. “So what do we do here? Because I can’t just sit back and let him get himself killed.”

“I didn’t say you should,” Steve said. “If we’re a team, maybe instead of fighting him on this, maybe we should see if we can find a way so he can do it as safely as possible and try to minimize the risks and make sure he has whatever help we’ve got to give.”

“We’re the ones who know how to control the intensity of the wavelengths the computer puts out,” Tony said, “and we’re the ones who know how to test different energy patterns. If he wanted to let us glue some wires to his head again, we could track what they’re doing to him.”

“We could probably give him a heavy dose of anti-seizure medication before we start,” Bruce suggested. “Maybe we can get whatever results he wants without pushing him over the edge into a full-out seizure again… that’s probably not necessary to trigger whatever he’s trying to trigger in there; it’s probably just a side effect of doing it.”

Steve smiled slightly. “That sounds like something Clint might even go along with.”

“Yeah, if we could find him and talk to him about it,” Tony muttered. 

“He heard everything you said,” Steve said, glancing up into a darkened corner of the ceiling behind the cranes and other equipment. “Didn’t you, Clint?”

“Fuck off,” Clint’s voice called down, but there wasn’t any real anger in it. “How’d you know?”

“Hyper-sensitized auditory abilities,” Steve said. “I could hear you breathing. Sorry.”

“You going to come down now or what?” Tony asked. 

“Thinking about it,” Clint said. “Is this a trick? If you’re going to grab me and lock me in my room as soon as I get down there…”

Tony opened his mouth to answer, but Bruce silenced him with a look. 

“We trust you,” he said. “Do you trust us?”

There was silence, and then a few bangs and rattles and other noises that got closer to the ground until Clint’s feet hit the floor and he walked out from behind the crane, laptop under his arm, barefoot and wary. He approached the three men at his own pace before handing Tony his laptop and pulling up a chair, spinning it around to sit with his arms and chin resting on the back. 

“Okay. I’m here.”

“You did a pretty good job of freaking us out, taking off like that,” Tony said. 

Clint looked at him steadily. “I won’t be a prisoner. Even if it’s for my own good.”

“Yeah. We get it,” Tony said. “Maybe Captain Tight-Pants here does know some things that are worth listening to.”

Steve frowned. “I wish you wouldn’t…”

Bruce raised his hand. “Trust me. That’s not even close to the worst nickname he could have for you. I promise. Just go with that one.”

Clint grinned. “What does he call me when I’m not around?”

Tony looked at him out of the corner of his eye. “Let’s just say if I’m talking about how tight something is, it’s not your pants.”

“He doesn’t even say that,” Bruce argued. “He’s just being a dick.”

“We could talk about how tight…” Clint started to say. 

“Umm… if we’re going to talk about that kind of thing, I think I’m going to leave,” Steve interrupted, his face turning red again.

“How about you stick around and help us, and Tony and Clint promise not to talk about asses or anything else you don’t want to hear about?” Bruce suggested. 

“I’m not promising anything like that,” Clint said. 

“Neither am I,” Tony agreed. “Man up and stick around and put up with the dirty jokes. It won’t kill you. I promise.”

Steve sighed and sat back down. “Fine. Can we at least not talk about…”

“Natasha’s off-limits for discussion,” Bruce said. 

“I second that,” Clint said, an edge of protectiveness creeping into his voice. 

“Okay, then,” Tony said, rubbing his hands together. “Let’s get to work, then.”


	40. Chapter 40

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint is (shockingly) impatient, and (also shockingly) jumps to some conclusions that require a bit of straightening out. Bruce can't help but be a scientist, even in bed, but this particular experiment triggers some extremely questionable results.

Apparently Clint was under the impression that once a decision had been made, experiments would commence immediately. He was not at all pleased to be informed that Tony had quite a bit of programming to do and scenarios to run, and that Bruce wasn’t going to let anyone do anything until the anti-seizure medications had time to take effect, and Steve generally wasn’t in a hurry to jump into anything without proper preparations, so that left Clint with nothing to do but pace the lab and check on Tony’s progress every two minutes and mutter under his breath about scientists until Bruce finally grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him back just before Tony lost his temper. 

“Clint. Relax.”

“Can’t,” he said impatiently, pulling away. “I don’t want to sit around and wait and…”

“Well, you driving Tony up the fucking wall while he’s trying to work isn’t going to make anything happen any faster.”

“Fuck off,” Clint muttered. 

“Get him out of here,” Tony called over his shoulder. “Whatever’s up his ass, I don’t need it in my lab at the moment.”

Bruce knew the difference between when Tony was “working” and when Tony was really working, and right now his intense focus meant that it wasn’t play time. 

“Let’s go, Clint.”

“I want to stay here and wait for…”

“You’re being thrown out,” Bruce said.

“Why?”

“Because this is Tony’s lab and Tony’s working his ass off, on something you asked him to do, actually, and you’re being an impatient pain in the ass.”

“I don’t want to…”

“Look. Steve is fully capable of removing you from the lab by force. And if you give Steve a hard time, the Hulk is fully capable of removing you from the lab by force, but stuff will get broken and that’s bad. So let’s go.”

Clint scowled and followed Bruce out the door. As they rode the elevator toward the living room, Clint leaned back against the wall and crossed his arms, tense and hostile. 

“What’s with you today?” Bruce asked. “I’m being serious. This isn’t you.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. Something’s under your skin, and it’s not the whole thing with Loki and…”

He paused and studied him for a moment. 

“Is this about Thor and Natasha?”

“No.”

“Yeah. It is. Are you jealous, or just pissed off that they didn’t ask you, or…”

“Shut up.”

“I’m asking for a reason. If we’re going to perform experiments on your brain and you’re under an unusual amount of stress about this, it could affect the results of the tests. If we’re working on the Loki problem, we need you thinking about Loki, not being pissed off about whatever those two are up to…”

“You know what they’re up to. It’s not hard to figure out,” Clint snapped. 

“You’re assuming things,” Bruce said. 

“I’m assuming that if they’re locked up in a room together and neither of them wants any of us to know what they’re doing, they’re doing shit they don’t want any of us to know about.”

“Yeah, but you don’t necessarily know what that shit is,” Bruce said. “Besides, what’s gotten you so pissed off, anyway? You didn’t seem to care that she was fucking Cap.”

“I don’t care who she fucks.”

“Bullshit,” Bruce said. “You’re ready to strangle someone right now. Why didn’t it matter if she was fucking Cap? Most people would be a little intimidated by the whole serum-enhanced super-guy thing…”

Clint shot him a look. “I’ve been running around being the normal human playing with mutants and gods and serum-enhanced super-guys and people with flying metal suits and everything else, and I’m standing there with a bow and some arrows. I’m not intimidated by somebody who can do things I can’t because they got something special I didn’t get.”

Bruce shook his head. “I think you weren’t intimidated because you knew Steve might be serum-enhanced, but he’s still too clean and clueless to give Natasha what she needed.”

Clint almost smiled. “That might be part of it.”

“Well, Thor’s definitely not clueless.”

“Yeah. I know. Seen him in action, you could say.”

“And you know what Natasha needs, and you know he’s got it. And that’s why you’re flipping out.”

“I am not fucking flipping out!” Clint said sharply, his voice much too loud, and he winced when he realized it. 

“Look, it’s going to have to get figured out eventually. And you know Thor doesn’t think about things like that the same way…”

He stopped talking when they walked into the living room and found Thor sitting at the counter, eating what appeared to be an entire box of cereal out of a large metal mixing bowl with a wooden spoon and looking disheveled, but cheerful. His smile faded when Clint saw him and looked quickly away. He would have walked back into the hall, but Bruce deliberately blocked his path and left him standing with his arms crossed, scowling at the wall and refusing to look at either of them. 

“Little Hawk…”

“Don’t call me that,” he muttered. 

Thor frowned and set down his spoon, his expression one of puzzlement and concern. “Why are you angry with me?”

“I’m not.”

Thor glanced at Bruce. “Why is he lying?”

“I don’t know. Because he’s an idiot?”

“Why would I be angry?” Clint asked, turning away. “You’re a grown-up and you can do whatever you want and so can Natasha, and there’s no reason anybody should give a fuck what I think about it if…”

Thor raised an eyebrow. “If what?”

Clint looked at the wall. “If you’re going to fuck the woman you know I still love.”

Thor shook his head and sighed. “You assume many things, little Hawk.”

“What?”

“There was no fucking. There was not intended to be. That’s not what she asked for and that’s not what happened.”

“Then what…”

“You should know enough about these things to know that submission need not have anything to do with physical sexual activity,” Thor said, giving him a rather stern look. “You should know Natasha better than that, even if you don’t know me better than that.”

Clint was still processing this when he felt a hand come to rest lightly on his shoulder. He knew who it belonged to, knew the touch better than anyone’s, but couldn’t look at her. 

“Clint…” she said quietly. “If it had been about sex, I would have talked to you about it first.”

“You didn’t talk to me about it before you started fucking Captain Tight-Pants.”

“That’s because I knew you wouldn’t care,” she said. 

“I didn’t care,” Clint said. “I knew you two would never have…”

“What we had?” she asked, her hand sliding up his neck and through his hair. 

“What we had,” he admitted, his voice low. 

“You were afraid maybe me and Thor could have something like what we had?”

Clint nodded. 

“Clint,” she said, turning his face to hers so he had to look at her, or at least in her general direction, “nobody’s going to have what we had. I went to Thor because I needed something and I knew he could give it to me safely and with no questions asked and no weirdness.”

“And with me…”

“There are always questions, and things are always weird afterwards, and safety isn’t even a concept in your book.”

“That’s… yeah. I guess that’s true.”

“I’m not afraid of you hurting me,” she said. “I’m afraid of us hurting each other, and I told you that a long time ago. And I needed someone to take away my thinking and put me in a different place… I’ve needed it for a long time… and I trusted Thor as a friend to do it, because if I trust him with you, I trust him with myself.”

“Did it help?” Clint asked, finally meeting her eyes. 

“Yes,” she said. “But I need a hot bath and a nap. And I’ll be wearing long sleeves for at least a week.”

She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek, then turned and headed off toward her room. Thor picked up his spoon and resumed eating, studiously focused on his cereal. 

Bruce elbowed Clint. He glared at him, but turned slowly toward Thor. 

“I’m sorry I…”

Thor smiled. “There is no need to apologize. You misunderstood the nature of the assistance that Natasha was seeking. Now that you understand more clearly, are you still angry with me?”

“No.”

“That’s all I ask,” Thor said, pleased.

“Good,” Bruce said. “Maybe now he can behave remotely like a normal person for a few hours while Tony does his programming.”

“I’m not sure about that,” Clint murmured, holding up his hands with a slightly puzzled expression. “I’m starting to feel a little fuzzy.”

“Yeah, well, we did kind of give you a lot of anti-seizure medication,” Bruce admitted. “It won’t do anything terrible… just make you light-headed and maybe a little slow… and maybe a little confused.”

“Why did you give me that?”

“Because we’d rather have you doped up than have you frying your brain cells.”

“Yeah, but what if something happens and I need to be able to think?”

“You’ll be fine. You never worried about being able to think before.” 

Clint rolled his eyes. “Ha ha.”

“Do you require assistance with him?” Thor asked. “I am not sure I’m prepared for a full…”

“I’ve got him,” Bruce said. “If this stuff is going to hit him this fast it’s probably going to hit him pretty hard, and he should be pretty relaxed and agreeable pretty shortly.”

“Very well,” Thor said, saluting them with his spoon. “Carry on, friends.”

 

 

Bruce wasn’t sure what put the thought into Clint’s head to pin him against the wall of the elevator and kiss him, except that it didn’t seem to take much to put that kind of idea in anybody’s head around here, and it was better than arguing with him at any rate. And while he didn’t make a habit of taking advantage of people under the influence of something, it was somewhat pleasant to have Clint lazy and pliable and uncomplaining as they stumbled back the hall toward Bruce’s room, colliding with the wall occasionally when Clint lost his balance and took Bruce with him. 

“You okay?”

“Seem to be,” Clint said, flopping back onto the bed and pulling his shirt over his head. 

“You know, these medications aren’t supposed to make you horny.”

Clint shrugged. “Doesn’t take much. That’s what happens when you live your entire life in fight, flight, or fuck mode. You’re always ready to do one of the three, and right now I don’t want to fight with you and I’m not generally inclined to run away from things, so that just leaves fucking.”

“Can’t argue with that logic,” Bruce said, unbuttoning his own shirt and thinking to himself that while that logic might work in this particular situation, it probably wasn’t psychologically good for a person in the long run. Not that Clint seemed to give a damn about what was psychologically good for him… and damn, Clint had managed to get naked with amazing speed, and there wasn’t much like a naked Clint sprawled on your bed watching you in dark-eyed silence to shut your brain up and get other parts of you working overtime. 

“Dr. Banner,” JARVIS said. “Mr. Stark would like to know the status of the medications administered to Agent Barton.”

“Umm… tell him we should be good to go in… I don’t know, about an hour?”

He swore that he could hear JARVIS’s disapproval. “Would you like me to notify him of your current activities?”

“You’ve seen everything Tony has done since he created you, and you can still give me attitude about this?” Bruce asked. 

“My programming does not…”

“Yeah, yeah. Just tell Tony we figured out what Clint was so riled up about and we’re getting him calmed down before we start zapping his brain with things.”

“Of course, sir.”

“Is Tony actually done with the programming already?”

“Oh, certainly not, Dr. Banner. It will be several hours before he has completed it.”

“Then why’s he asking what Clint and I are doing?”

“Because Mr. Stark has difficulty remaining focused on his own activities when other people may be engaged in more interesting ones.”

“Are you saying he can’t mind his own damn business?”

“Something like that, sir.”

Bruce glanced at Clint. “Fine. Then tell him that we had a nice chat with Thor and Natasha and that now I’m about to fuck Clint every way I can think of, and we’ll be down after that.”

This time, JARVIS definitely sighed. “I will communicate the general message, sir. Thank you.”

Clint grinned. “Are you really going to fuck me every way you can think of?”

“Nah. That sounds like a lot of work and we’ve got a lot to do today. I thought we’d just stick with the basics.”

 

 

It absently slipped into the back of Clint’s mind at some point that he’d never been alone with Bruce before, without Bruce’s attention divided between the two potential disasters that were Clint and Tony. He decided that he was going to have to make an effort to make it happen more often, because having Bruce’s full attention meant benefitting fully from Bruce’s intense focus and precise attention to detail. 

He’d been light-headed before they started and Bruce fucking him very slowly and working him right up to the edge before backing off and letting him come down wasn’t helping. He wasn’t sure how many times Bruce had done it to him, but he was aware that his voice was starting to sound increasingly desperate even if it wasn’t making actual words. 

“Want you to do something for me,” Bruce murmured, leaning over him. 

Clint whined. 

“It’s an experiment.”

Of course, the scientists would want to do experiments even while they were fucking, Clint thought. “Fine… whatever… just… what?”

“Want you… to think about the most intense, most mind-blowing sex you’ve ever had…”

“Why?”

“Because when you come, I want you to say that person’s name…”

“Is this about that shit with Tasha and Thor…”

“Stop trying to figure things out. Just do it.”

Clint couldn’t really think of a reason to object, so he closed his eyes and let his body focus on the sensation of Bruce’s hand reaching down to wrap around his cock while he let his mind drift to other times, other people, wondering to himself why he couldn’t seem to remember the most intense and mind-blowing sex he’d ever had. 

There was a moment when everything seemed to implode, and he realized in that moment that he shouldn’t be thinking about this, shouldn’t be thinking about this at all, that it was bad and there was a reason he couldn’t remember and he wasn’t supposed to remember and that something was horribly, bewilderingly wrong, and then he came back to himself and found Bruce staring down at him with stunned eyes. 

“Shit. What?” Clint asked. 

“Do you know what you just said?” Bruce asked. 

“Do I want to?”

“You said somebody’s name.”

“I’m guessing from the look on your face it wasn’t yours.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about,” Bruce said. 

The feeling that something was very wrong wrapped around Clint’s stomach and twisted hard. He tried to swallow, tried to breathe evenly. 

“Clint… you said Loki’s name.”

“Yeah,” he murmured. “That’s sort of what I was afraid of.”

“Clint, is there something you’re not telling us?”

“I think there’s something someone’s not telling me,” Clint said. “I think there’s something my brain’s not telling me. Because it really, really, really doesn’t think I want to know.”

Bruce sat up. “You know… maybe it’s not you that doesn’t want you to know. You said last time you saw Loki, he acted like there was something going on that he didn’t like.”

“Yeah…”

“Maybe you do want to remember. Maybe Loki’s the one who wants to make sure you don’t.”

“Why?”

“Because if there’s more to what happened with you two than just him controlling you… maybe that means Thor’s right and you really are a threat to him somehow. I mean, if this was something that you had repressed, that injection should have brought it out along with everything else. But it didn’t.”

“So… maybe someone else repressed it for me. Because someone else doesn’t want me to remember.”

Bruce nodded. 

“I want to know,” Clint said, his eyes sharpening their focus. “Can we undo whatever he did to block them?”

“Only one way to find out,” Bruce said. “And considering how pissy he was last time you saw him, something tells me we’re on the right track.”


	41. Chapter 41

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the team somewhat reluctantly prepares to assist Clint in his attempts to do questionable things to his brain, Bruce makes it clear that the things you don't know can hurt you.

Clint and Bruce returned to the lab to find Tony still absorbed in his programming and muttering curses at the bots where they sat in their corner, trying not to annoy him any further. Thor had arrived and seated himself on one of the desks a safe distance from Tony’s workstation, and Steve apparently had considered this a prudent course of action, because he was leaning against the wall beside Thor, watching the video monitoring screens across the lab. 

“Where’s Natasha?” Clint demanded. 

“Sleeping,” Thor said. 

“We don’t need her at the moment,” Tony said, without looking up. “I promised her we’d call her before we actually did anything.”

“You mean we’re still not ready to do anything?” Clint protested. 

“Is he still bitching?” Tony asked. “That cocktail of anti-seizure stuff ought to have been enough to mellow the Hulk out.”

“He was pretty mellow, for a little while,” Bruce said. 

“I would have thought your activities with Dr. Banner might have taken the edge off your impatience, little Hawk,” Thor said. 

“Well, they might have, if it hadn’t been for… things.”

He realized in the middle of the sentence that he wasn’t sure he wanted to finish it, but that was enough to get everyone’s attention, even Tony’s. 

“What things?” he asked. “Things relevant to this experiment? Do I need to know about this?”

Before Clint could attempt an awkward and not very useful semi-explanation, Bruce stepped in. 

“Let’s just say that we have reason to believe that there are some memories that may not have been uncovered by Clint’s little experiment with the interrogation drug.”

“From what Natasha said, that stuff should have uncovered everything, even repressed memories,” Steve said.

“It would… unless those memories were being repressed by somebody other than Clint. As in, someone else deliberately messed with his head and blocked him from having any access to those memories, even if his own natural defenses were taken out.”

Thor frowned. “My brother would be responsible for this, then. What sort of memories would he block Clint from recalling? It seems more like Loki to want Clint to remember everything, that he might be more thoroughly tormented by it.”

“That’s the thing,” Bruce said. “If Loki doesn’t want Clint remembering something, it’s not because it’s something that would be harmful to Clint…”

“It’s because it’s something that would be harmful to Loki,” Thor said. 

Tony gritted his teeth. “I’m going to have to re-run all the scenarios…”

“No, you’re not,” Bruce said, before Clint could hit the roof. “We are proceeding as planned.”

Clint scowled. “In another three days, right?”

“Two hours,” Tony said. 

“Two hours? What the hell are you…”

Bruce was already motioning, and before Clint could finish what he was saying, Thor had already crossed the room in a few big strides and clapped one large hand over Clint’s mouth while the other swiftly locked him against Thor’s chest. He made a sharp sound of protest and aimed a few half-hearted kicks at Thor’s legs, which Thor ignored.   
“What shall I do with him, Dr. Banner?”

“Just find something to do with him or somewhere to put him before Tony ends up killing him or he decides to go off and do something stupid on his own.”

“That can be managed,” Thor said. 

Bruce noted that Clint did a lot of kicking and squirming but made very little actual effort to get loose as Thor steered him back toward the soundproofed rooms at the back of the lab. 

“You know,” Steve said, “considering that the guy is a trained assassin and an expert in about five different types of hand-to-hand combat, you’d think he could put up a little more of a fight than that, even if Thor is stronger.”

Bruce chuckled. “He could… if he felt like it. And if he did, Thor would know it and let him go. The fact that he’s only putting up a half-assed fight is sort of like a code for ‘I want you to haul me off and do stuff to me, but it’s not fun if I don’t at least put up some resistance’.”

Steve raised an eyebrow. “So is that what Natasha was trying to tell me?”

“About what?”

“She said she could never find anybody she could trust enough to put up a fight and let herself lose… and sometimes you need to let yourself lose.”

“Hmm. You ever start thinking once in a while that it would be nice to have somebody be able to put Captain America on his back and do whatever they wanted to him?”

Steve shifted his feet uneasily. “I don’t think I like that idea…”

“Of course you do,” Tony said, his eyes still on his computer screen. 

“How do you know?” Steve asked, a bit sharply. 

“Because. You may be a soldier and you may be a leader, but when it comes to sex my guess would be you don’t have an ounce of dominant in you anywhere.”

“That’s none of your business, even if you did know what you were talking about.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Bruce said. “He’s still too busy playing the ‘I totally want to be Captain Dominant all the time except for the parts where I pretend I don’t like getting shoved around and fucked into the wall and’…”

“You can shut up now,” Tony interrupted. 

“I’d get back to work if I were you,” Bruce said. “The kind of mood Clint’s in, I don’t know how long even Thor’s going to be able to keep him down.”

 

 

Apparently Bruce had underestimated Thor’s abilities, because it was at least an hour later when the big man strolled out from the back of the lab as casually as if he were just returning from the restroom. 

“Where’s Clint?” Bruce asked. 

“Asleep. And handcuffed to a table.”

“Wait… what?”

“I said…”

“Did he fall asleep first and then you handcuffed him to the table?”

Thor smiled. “Not exactly. It seems that the medicines you’ve given him made him a bit drowsy, after his excess energy had been expended.”

“So he’s sleeping on the table?”

“No, no,” Thor said, waving his hand as if to say that such an idea was silly. “He’s under the table. I handcuffed him to the table leg. That way, when he wakes up, he can free himself without damaging anything.”

“Where the fuck did you get handcuffs from in my lab?” Tony asked. 

“I have my methods,” Thor said lightly. “Now, I suggest that you finish your work before our Hawk recovers and regains his impatience.”

“I’m just about done,” Tony said. “Are you sure whatever these repressed memories are that you’re talking about, they’re not going to have anything to do with this experiment?”

“I’m pretty sure they will,” Bruce said. “But since we don’t know anything about them or how Loki managed to stuff them under the covers in the first place, there’s no way to predict what that variable might do, so there’s no point in worrying about it at the moment.”

Tony gave him a sideways look. “If this is how you do all your experiments, it’s no wonder you ended up gamma-radiated.”

“If this is how you do all your experiments, it’s no wonder your only lab partners are nonverbal robots.”

“I’m a little more careful with other people than with myself,” Tony said. 

“Which is admirable, honestly… but for Clint’s sake, and before he does anything dumb and dangerous, we have to do something and we have to do it soon.”

Tony nodded. “All right. I think I’m as ready as I’m going to be, then. I can’t guarantee this isn’t going to go extremely badly.”

“Can anybody ever guarantee that about anything?” Steve asked. 

“No,” Bruce said. “The Other Guy taught me that. So we might as well go wake Clint up get this show on the road.”

 

 

“Hold still,” Bruce said. 

“How many of those things are you going to stick to my head?” Clint asked, looking up at Bruce from his seat in one of the desk chairs next to the main computer screen. 

“All of them.”

“Do you have to?”

“If you want us to be able to tell what’s going on in your brain when we start broadcasting those wavelengths, I do. And even if you don’t care, we want the data in case we need to look at it later and see what happened.”

Tony tapped one foot in a nervous, jerky rhythm on the floor as he checked his calculations. “S.H.I.E.L.D. documented the Tesseract broadcasting some types of radiation that they couldn’t even explain, much less measure. We’ve got no way to duplicate that, but what the computer’s ready to start putting out is a combination of all the wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation that they could track coming from the thing. I don’t know what it’s going to do to you.”

“Hopefully, something interesting,” Clint said. “I’m ready… are you done gluing things to me?”

“A few more,” Bruce said. “Take off your shirt.”

Clint was already pulling his shirt over his head before it even occurred to him to ask what for. 

“These,” Bruce said, “are electrodes that I’m going to stick on your chest so that we can shock you if your heart stops.”

“Umm… you’re not actually expecting that to happen, are you?” Clint asked. 

“Not really. But it’s good to be prepared. You ready?”

“I’ve been ready…”

Bruce motioned to Thor. “Come over here and be ready to grab him if he starts to go off the chair. We put a rubber mat down, so if he does go out, try to get him to fall on that.”

“Of course.”

Natasha, who had arrived with her hair still damp from a bath and noticeably dressed in a black shirt with long sleeves and a high collar that covered most of her neck, watched the computer display projected into the air above Tony’s desk.

“Are we really going to do this?”

“Well, it seems to be either we do it this way, or Clint runs off and puts his head in the microwave,” Tony said. “At least this way, we might get some useful results along with the mess.”

“Hit it,” Bruce said. 

Tony sighed. “JARVIS. Activate the program with a thirty second countdown.”

“Yessir. Program to commence in thirty seconds.”

“Okay. Now, if anybody other than Clint feels anything weird, just get out of the lab… the waves are shielded in here. And Bruce and Thor and I have our emergency protocol…”

“You didn’t consult me about that,” Natasha said, frowning. 

“Too late now,” Bruce said. 

The wavelengths should have been beyond detection by any human senses, even enhanced ones like Steve’s, but somehow the combination created a strange, ominous feeling in the air. Natasha recognized it, and so did Thor, and so did Clint; anyone who had actually been in the presence of the Tesseract itself had felt the subtle but unsettling alien pulse of the thing. Clint blinked, and then his body stiffened and he arched back in the chair, eyes rolling back. Thor grabbed his shoulders to steady him, but he still seemed to be conscious, or at least conscious enough to force his gaze to fix on Natasha when she said his name. 

“What’s going on?” she demanded. 

Bruce looked over at the screen monitoring the wires stuck to Clint’s head. “It’s not a seizure. Some unusual electrical activity, but we expected that…”

Clint jerked against Thor’s hands and his head fell back as his hands clenched. 

“Clint,” Natasha said again. 

His head snapped back up, and his eyes opened, but this time they were an almost opaque, luminous, electrical blue, and they were sharply, intently focused. 

“Yeah,” he said, his voice low, but clear. 

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.”

“Look at his hands,” Bruce said. 

Everyone followed Bruce’s stare; the palms of Clint’s hands were radiating the same electric blue glow, brightest at the tips of his fingers and tracing up his arms. 

“Okay, the readings are getting weird now,” Bruce said. 

“Weird how?” Tony asked. 

“Weird, like there’s nothing in any of the research JARVIS pulled for us that even looks remotely like this.”

Clint studied his hands for a moment, then clenched his fists. The glow intensified, shining between his fingers. He turned and looked over his shoulder, fixing Thor with his strangely blue eyes. 

“Grab my arm.”

Thor frowned, but reached and wrapped his hand securely around Clint’s upper arm. Clint’s body tightened, and then he pulled hard and jerked himself abruptly out of Thor’s grasp. 

“Umm… please tell me you weren’t holding onto him that tightly,” Tony said. 

“I was holding with all my strength,” Thor said. 

“Well, fuck,” Tony muttered. 

“Does Loki know he can do this?” Natasha asked. 

Thor nodded. “I have no doubt that he does.”

“That’s why he wasn’t supposed to survive the attack on the Helicarrier,” she said. “Even with the Tesseract to control him, Loki must have been worried that he could break it.”

“I think Loki knew he could break it,” Bruce said. “And I’m pretty sure I know how he found out, too.”

He stepped in front of Clint, making sure he had his full attention. Thor gave him a warning look; if Clint was strong enough at the moment to give Thor a real fight and nobody knew what was going on in his head, within his reach might not be the safest place to be. 

“Clint, can you listen to me?”

Clint cocked his head. “Yeah.”

“You remember us talking about things that Loki had blocked you from remembering? I’m willing to bet you can remember them now, if you think. Try to focus on whatever it was that you did that Loki wouldn’t want you to remember you could do…”

“Playing with fire here, Bruce…” Tony muttered. 

“Got to be done,” Bruce said. “Clint’s fine. He can do this. He’s had to do worse things.”

“Bruce…” Natasha warned. “We might wake up something we don’t want to have to live with.”

“It’s Clint’s to live with,” Bruce argued. “Look… trust me on this one. I have to live with everything that the Other Guy does every time he gets loose… everything that gets broken, everyone that gets hurt… I have to live with all of that in my head, but I’d rather live with it and know than live with knowing he had done horrible things but not being able to know what they were.”

“I want to know,” Clint said. 

“Think,” Bruce encouraged him. “Loki. Something happened that he doesn’t want you to remember. Did you get out from under his control and do something…”

Clint’s eyes widened, and Bruce could see awareness, shock, and confusion chasing each other through the glowing blue depths. 

“Clint?” Natasha asked. 

“Shit,” he murmured. “No wonder that’s not the version of things he wanted me to remember…”

His voice trailed off, and his head started to twitch to the side as his eyes went blank and his fingers dug into his palms. Bruce looked up at the screen. 

“Okay, that’s definitely a seizure. JARVIS, cut it. Right now.”

“Dr. Banner, I don’t…”

“Terminate the program,” Tony snapped. “Now.”

“Yes, sir.”

Clint fell like a toy dropped by a distracted child, and only Thor’s quick grab kept him from pitching forward onto the floor. Natasha grabbed his head and tipped it back. 

“He’s out. Bruce?”

“Didn’t manage to make it to a full grand mal seizure… we cut it off before then. The activity in his brain is still pretty profoundly abnormal, but it doesn’t look dangerous.”

“What should we do with him? How long do you think he’ll be out?” Tony asked. 

“No idea,” Bruce said. 

“Okay, then… when he does wake up, is he still going to be Super-Clint? Because that could be really, really bad.”

“Sir,” JARVIS said, “the heightened strength Agent Barton displayed is a direct result of stimulation of residual energy from the Tesseract in his body. Unless that residual energy is being directly stimulated, it should remain inactive as it has until now.”

“Okay. That’s a good thing. So what the hell do we do about this residual energy?”

“I have nothing in my programming to suggest a strategy for addressing this issue, sir. It may not be possible to remove the residual energy without harming Agent Barton.”

“Well, Loki’s going to try to remove it, and he’s not really very concerned about harming him last time I checked,” Natasha said.

“Loki doesn’t know how to remove it either,” Tony said. “And I think now we have some idea why he can’t just show up and take it…”

“If he does something to activate that residual energy…” Natasha said. “Is that what happened that Loki didn’t want him to remember?”

“I think it might have been… something a little more… personal,” Bruce said. 

The others looked at each other for a moment. 

“Well, shit,” Tony said. “You think there was…”

“Loki wanted Clint to only remember him using the Tesseract to force him into it,” Bruce said. “I think at some point, Clint managed to get some of that energy under his own control for a little while, and he turned the tables on Loki.”

“Clint’s not like that,” Natasha said, suddenly defensive. “He may be… but he would never…”

“I’m not saying he did the same thing to Loki that Loki did to him,” Bruce said. 

“He wouldn’t have to,” Thor muttered. 

“He wouldn’t?”

“No. My brother… loves a fight. In that way, he’s much like our Hawk. He is only truly… satisfied when his partner is an opponent who can fight back, and part of him very much desires an opponent with the ability to defeat him.”

“Why would Clint be able to get his self-control back to do that, but not to keep himself from being used to attack the Helicarrier?” Steve asked. 

“Because there’s a tremendous difference between following orders and protecting one’s own physical integrity,” Thor said. 

“Following orders is a learned behavior,” Tony said. “Self-protection is instinct. Loki pushing him to follow orders wouldn’t have triggered the same kind of gut response as Loki physically hurting him.”

“I think when he wakes up, he’s going to have to talk to Thor,” Natasha said. 

“That depends on whether Thor really want to hear about his brother…”

“I will listen,” Thor declared. “And if he should wake in a mood that requires… intervention…”

“Yeah. You’re the guy for the job,” Tony said. 

“I told you guys this was a bad idea,” Natasha muttered. 

“You think everything I do is a bad idea,” Tony argued.

“Not everything. Just most things.”

“Well, thanks for the vote of confidence,” Tony said. 

Bruce elbowed him. “She lets you get your hands on Clint. And experiment on his brain. You don’t think that says something?”

Tony glanced at Natasha. “Does that say something?”

“You figure it out,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m going back to my room. Thor, call me when he wakes up and he’s in the mood to talk.”


	42. Chapter 42

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint recalls his run-in with Loki, and this time, it doesn't quite play out the same way it did before.

Natasha looked into Thor’s room, crossing her arms and scowling at the sight of Thor sitting in the chair by the bed and Clint still sprawled out exactly where he’d been last time she was there. 

“He’s still not awake?”

Thor looked up from the piece of wood he was whittling, and Natasha wondered if Tony knew or cared that Thor was using his kitchen knives for woodcarving, and what the maids would think of all the sawdust and wood shavings all over the carpet. 

“He hasn’t woken yet.”

“I told them this wasn’t a good idea.”

“You let them do it,” Thor said, shrugging. 

Her shoulders tightened, but not only was Thor right, he also wasn’t going to be intimidated by her anger the way she was used to people being. 

“Yeah, I did. Because I know Clint and when he’s got his mind set on something… have you tried waking him up?”

“I spoke to him, but that’s all.”

She contemplated trying something more drastic to wake him up, just as punishment for this entire game, but decided there probably wasn’t a good excuse for it, since he didn’t seem to be in any distress. The wires still stuck to him were sending information to JARVIS and Bruce and Tony in the lab, and when she asked they told her his head was a disorganized general mess but that he didn’t seem to have suffered any harm, although he might not be tremendously coherent until it settled down. 

“Are you that anxious to know what he might have to tell you?” Thor asked. 

“Yes,” she said. “Because we’re going to have to deal with it, all of us, and I want to be ready, because as soon as Clint’s back on his feet he’s going to want to be doing something about it.”

Thor considered for a moment. “He may be able to show me, even if he’s not able to tell me.”

“How’s that?”

Thor set down his woodcarving. “Loki’s ability to intrude into the minds of others isn’t unique to him. He is particularly talented at manipulating and controlling what he finds there, but the ability to share a part of someone else’s mind is one most of my kind possess to some degree.”

“Why haven’t you done it before?”

“I would never do it without permission. And permission has not been given. I would not intrude on someone else’s mind without their consent any more than I would intrude on their body without consent.”

She nodded. “It’s a shame Loki doesn’t feel the same way.”

“Loki… his mind isn’t like mine, or like others. He sees the world… differently. He does not know right and wrong as others know it. He was born a trickster, and his changeability is part of his nature. It is said in Asgard that it will be Loki’s betrayal that brings about the final battle… I hope this isn’t true, but I have deceived myself long enough about my brother’s true nature. Betrayal is born into him, whether he chooses it or not. In the end, he betrays those he loves and then betrays even himself.”

Natasha watched him with unrevealing eyes. “Are you trying to defend him?”

“No. I have no defense left for him, not after he turned on me and those I love. But I do feel sorrow for him. I know that he wishes to love and be loved as others are, and he knows that his true nature will always betray him and force him to destroy, by his own hand, that which he loves the most.”

“So he can never trust anyone, especially himself,” Natasha said quietly. “And he knows that when everything goes to shit, it will always be his own fault, because he was given powers he never asked for and doesn’t necessarily want, but they make him who he is.”

“Yes.”

She sighed and turned away from him. “Welcome to my life. Damnit… I really wasn’t looking for you to go and make me feel halfway bad for the asshole that tried to take my partner from me.”

“I was only trying to explain why Loki acts as he does… and my own shame in knowing that my arrogance pushed him toward the isolation he has created for himself.”

“You didn’t make him do what he did.”

“No… but had I understood him better, perhaps I could have prevented it.”

Natasha shook her head. “Everybody always thinks that… after the fact. Truth is, people do what they do and then we pick up the pieces.”

She grabbed Clint’s hand where it lay outstretched on the bed and wrapped his fingers around hers. 

“Okay, Clint. You give me a squeeze if you can hear me.”

His hand tightened around hers, and she nodded. 

“Right. Two squeezes if you’ve been listening to everything Thor and I have been saying.”

Thor cocked his head. “Has he been listening?”

“He says he has. I think his brain’s just still too scrambled to coordinate things enough to wake up all the way. Clint, did you hear what Thor said about you being able to show him whatever happened that… okay, okay, you heard him.”

She glanced at Thor. 

“Do you want to let Thor into your head so you can show him… all right! I didn’t say twist my fingers off. I get the idea. Does that qualify as permission for you, Thor?”

“You are his guardian. It qualifies as permission only if you give it.”

She looked down at him and shook her head. “I’m not his guardian. I’m not anybody’s guardian. That would be… like putting Loki in charge of being someone’s guardian. But he definitely seems to understand what’s going on and he wants us to know about it… or at least wants you to know about it. Whether it’s something the rest of us need to know is up to you and Clint.”

“You can stay…”

“It’s okay. JARVIS will call me if you guys need me.”

The door slid closed behind her. Thor shifted his chair closer to the bed and leaned in to study Clint’s face intently. 

“You are more awake than you want us to know.”

Dark gray eyes blinked and tried to focus on his face. “Tasha…”

“You didn’t want to talk to her?”

“Later. She gets…”

“Yes. When it involves you, she does. Are you still struggling to put thoughts together?”

He nodded. 

“Do you want me to…”

“Yes.”

“Are you certain that…”

“Yes.”

“Little Hawk, last time someone was in your mind, they did not treat it well. Are you sure you want…”

“Yes,” he snapped, irritated. “Fuck. Trust you. Haven’t… figured that out?”

Thor grinned. “Very well. Then lay back and close your eyes, and we shall see if your memories have reassembled themselves enough for you to show them to me.”

“They have,” Clint said, with certainty. 

“Good. If you want to stop…”

“Just shut up and do it.”

“That sounds like the Hawk we know and love,” Thor said, chuckling and reaching out to lay a hand on Clint’s chest. 

 

 

Natasha wasn’t sure what Bruce and Tony had been up to before she walked into the lab, but apparently JARVIS had given them enough warning that by the time she arrived, they were straightening their shirts and looking at the computer screens and pretending to be in the middle of a discussion. 

“I thought you guys were working,” she said. 

“You know what they say about all work and no play…” Tony said, looking at the ceiling. 

“There hasn’t been much interesting happening, and JARVIS is still crunching numbers,” Bruce explained, waving at the computer screen. 

“Numbers on what?”

“Trying to correlate the wavelengths we know we were broadcasting with the brain activity the scanner was reading from Clint and see if there were any patterns that make any sense. Clint awake yet?”

“Sort of. Do me a favor and keep a close eye on that scanner for a little while, okay?”

Bruce frowned. “Sure.”

“And it might not be a bad idea to bring up the camera in Thor’s room on one of the monitors over here so you can keep an eye on that too.”

“Why? What’s Thor doing?” Tony asked. “If it involves his usual method of naked fun times, we might not want to…”

“It shouldn’t, as far as I know,” Natasha said, but Bruce could have sworn that he caught the small almost-a-smile that she turned her head to hide from Tony. 

“So, if it’s not naked fun times…”

“Apparently Loki’s not the only one who can play around inside people’s heads,” she said. “Except that apparently Thor doesn’t consider it acceptable to do without someone giving him permission first, which doesn’t seem to be a concern of Loki’s.”

“Maybe that’s because Thor isn’t batshit fucking crazy,” Bruce muttered. 

“Thor’s planning to go play in Clint’s head?” Tony asked, frowning. “Is that a good idea?”

“Is anything we do around here a good idea?” she asked. 

“I just like to figure we have an unusually broad definition of ‘good idea’,” Bruce said. 

“Well, let’s go with that and say that within our unusually broad definition, it might be a good idea,” she said. “I don’t know how long Clint’s going to be out, or at least not able to communicate clearly, and the longer he’s locked up in his head with whatever’s going on in there, the worse it’s likely to be. I trust Thor to take care of Clint…”

“Then why are we monitoring everything?” Tony asked. “You only ask us to do that when you’re worried about someone getting hurt…”

“It’s not Clint you’re worried about, is it,” Bruce said. 

Tony grinned. “Like Clint’s going to hurt Thor. Have you met Thor? You know, gigantic huge blond god-type guy…”

“You don’t understand,” Natasha interrupted him. “I know what’s in Clint’s head. We’ve spent a lot of time together. A lot of time on a lot of missions with nothing to do but talk. And a lot of time in between missions when there’s been no one else we could trust to talk to but each other. I know what’s in his head and it’s a lot uglier than you think it is.”

“What do you mean, ugly?”

“I mean angry,” she said quietly. “Angry and hurt and frustrated. And always, always waiting for the next blow. The next punch, the next shot, the next betrayal… anything. Something. Always waiting to be hurt again. Always ready to fight back when the hurt comes around.”

“So why does someone who’s been hurt that much come to us wanting to be hurt?” Bruce asked. 

“It’s the only thing he trusts,” she said. “And this conversation is not on the record and you will never repeat a word of it, but I want you guys watching because I don’t want to be all the way up in the lab if something does go wrong… I want to be close enough to get in there and stop things if I think they’re going badly. And I need you to tell me if it looks like they’re going badly.”

She turned and walked back out the door. Bruce glanced at Tony. 

“I’d think Thor’s been around long enough to know what he’s doing, wouldn’t you?”

“Hope so,” Tony said. “If there’s stuff in Clint’s brain that Thor can’t deal with, it means you and I are way, way over our heads.”

“Is that anything new?”

Tony chuckled. “Not really.”

“Thor’s pretty sharp. Sharper than I think Natasha’s giving him credit for… but I guess in her line of work, expecting the worst is probably a survival tactic. I mean, the stakes are a little higher… we mess up an experiment and maybe we blow up some equipment or something like that. But if she messes something up… I don’t even know how bad it would be. I don’t know how big her stuff is.”

“It’s pretty big,” Tony said. “She and Clint aren’t at the top of Fury’s list for no reason.”

“So she can’t afford to do anything except assume the worst and be ready to deal with it,” Bruce said. “All we can do is keep an eye on the screens and have JARVIS give her a yell if anything seems off.”

Tony looked at the monitor. “Right now I just see Thor sitting there with his hand on Clint’s chest. Holy fuck… he has huge hands.”

“Are you always this easily distracted?”

“Yes. Except when I’m not.”

 

 

Thor waited with some amusement, feeling Clint scramble to put things in his head together like a child whose mother had just walked into an extremely messy bedroom. 

“Easy, friend. I am not in a hurry. And you are not accustomed to…”

“No… it’s important.”

“All right. I’m listening.”

“Damnit…”

“You still seem rather… disorganized, little Hawk. Perhaps we should do this later…”

“No… now!”

“Very well… but your impatience and frustration are clouding everything else. Calm yourself. I know that you know how to calm your mind… you’re an archer. For an arrow to find its mark, the archer’s mind must be focused. If you never miss, even if the chaos of battle, you know how to focus.”

He had hoped that thinking of something as familiar and as natural to Clint as his bow and arrows would help to bring him back to more stable footing, and it seemed he had been correct, because he felt the frantic jumble of thoughts around him start to dissipate. 

“Scheming bastard…”

“I’m sure that’s not the first time someone has described my brother in such terms.”

“Memories… fake memories. He put them there for me to find. Fakes. Knew I’d go looking. So he left me fakes to find.”

“Which memories, little Hawk? Which ones were fake?”

“What I told… Bruce and Natasha. When… the drug. I told them about… damnit.”

“I remember what you told them. About how he used the power of the Tesseract to…”

“Didn’t happen.”

“It didn’t happen?”

“No. That was the fake memory. The one he meant for me to find. Wanted me to think…”

“Show me what really happened, little Hawk.”

 

 

The memory was the same, up to a point: Clint’s resistance, and Loki’s drawing on the Tesseract to break it. It wasn’t until Clint was on the floor, his body completely removed from his control, that everything changed, because when Loki leaned in and his cool hands came to rest on Clint’s skin, the awareness that he was in danger, immediate physical danger, hit him and shattered the hazy blue fog that had taken over him. 

Clint had learned very, very young what it meant to be in danger, and to react, to protect himself, no matter what. Whether it had been dodging his father’s unpredictable drunken blows or avoiding the mean-spirited orphanage bully or training for a risky circus stunt or getting the hell out of an undercover mission that had just gone very bad, he had learned, and learned well, that danger meant that it was time to do something, and do something NOW, to survive, to get out, to eliminate the threat… whatever had to be done. 

The fog over his brain and his body fractured and fell apart as the deeper instinct that had kept him alive all these years clicked. Where the fog had been, his muscles suddenly surged with a weird, pulsing force, and when he looked down he realized that the blue glow that emanated from Loki’s staff was being dimmed by the brightness of the blue light blazing through Clint’s skin. 

Loki jerked back, his expression one of puzzlement. Clint didn’t stop to think, and he wasn’t sure he could think at the moment, with the blue electric buzzing through his brain. Before he could even put a thought together, he was off the floor, stumbling to his feet, and even as Loki backed away, Clint grabbed him hard by the arms and hurled him back against the concrete wall. Loki glared at him, indignant. 

“You will not…”

Whatever he was going to say was cut off when Clint grabbed him again and spun him around and slammed him face-first against the wall, pinning his arms behind him and twisting them hard. 

“I’ll fucking kill you,” he growled. 

Loki squirmed, then tried to jerk his arms free, and then seemed to realize that he really was in trouble, because Clint wasn’t letting go, no matter how hard Loki tried. 

“There’s no need for that, Hawk,” he said, his tone entirely different than it had been a minute before. 

“Fuck you. You were going to…”

“You don’t know what I was going to do. I was testing your submission. You’re stubborn. Much too stubborn for your own good, or I wouldn’t have had to…”

“Getting someone to follow orders is not a fucking excuse to do what you were going to do to me,” Clint snapped, twisting his arm harder, hard enough that Loki winced. 

“You never know, Hawk,” he said, still mocking even in his precarious position. “You might have enjoyed it.”

Anger flared blue and blinding behind Clint’s eyes and he dragged Loki away from the wall and shoved him to the floor, driving him down with a knee to his back. Loki tried to flip himself over at the last moment and make an attempt to fight back, but rage, training, and the vibrating force of the Tesseract energy had made Clint faster, and he pinned him down, face pressed into the floor. 

“What the fuck makes you think I would enjoy being forced against my will? Is that what you enjoy? You’re fucking crazy enough. Is that what you like? Is that what you want?”

“You know nothing about me,” Loki hissed. 

“I don’t want to know anything about you. I want out of here.”

“You’re not leaving here, Hawk. You are mine. You will obey my orders.”

“It sure as fuck doesn’t look that way right now, does it?” Clint asked. 

“Are you so sure?”

“Well, you’re the one with his face getting smashed into the floor and his arms just about broken, so I’m going to say this isn’t looking like me obeying your orders.”

“Not at the moment,” Loki said. “But you will.”

“Why are you so goddamned calm?” Clint demanded, shaking him. 

“Because I don’t think you will harm me.”

“Why the hell not? You were going to harm me!”

“I don’t think you have it in you to harm someone who is helpless at your hands, little Hawk, even if you know they will turn on you later.”

Clint gritted his teeth. 

“Fuck you.”

Loki grinned. “Go ahead. Hurt me. I’ve seen what’s in your head. I know it gives you pleasure.”

“I hurt people when I’m working.”

“This isn’t work?”

“This is personal. You’re messing with my brain. That makes it pretty damn personal.”

He had loosened his grip enough for Loki to glance over his shoulder at him with eyes that were bright and unafraid. 

“And if you only hurt people when you’re working, Hawk, where does that leave you and I? What happens when it’s personal?”

Clint tried to force himself to think straight, but it wasn’t working. His head was still clouded, and even though his body was still on full alert and in full defense mode, Loki’s voice was starting to work its way into his mind, and the way he shifted under the weight of Clint’s naked body wasn’t helping to clear his mind or to get Loki out of it. 

“When it’s personal… I never hurt anyone who didn’t come to me looking to be hurt,” he said. 

“What if someone comes to you looking to be hurt, little Hawk?” Loki asked, his eyes hypnotic in their brightness. 

“I give them what they want.”

“And what if they are too proud to ask you for it?”

“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Clint heard himself saying. 

“And what if they fight you?”

“I like it better that way.”

“Good,” Loki said. “Because I will fight you with everything I have.”

“I’m not like you,” Clint said sharply. “I would never… not if someone said ‘no’.”

“I recall saying I was ready for a fight,” Loki said. “I don’t recall the word ‘no’ ever having anything to do with that statement.”

Clint shook his head again to try to clear it. He was just about certain that this was a very bad idea, but at this point, he wasn’t sure it mattered.


	43. Chapter 43

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha, Steve, Tony, and Bruce attempt to determine whether their new information about Clint and Loki gives them anything useful to go on and come to the conclusion that Loki might have bigger problems than they realized. Meanwhile, it's Thor's job to keep a still-scrambled Clint occupied, and everyone knows there's only one proper way to do that.

“Okay,” Natasha said, waving her hand toward the holographic screen displayed over the desk in the lab. “Let’s take a look at a personality profile.”

Steve sat up attentively and reached for a pen, while Bruce leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms and Tony deliberately yawned. 

“Just stop being an asshole and listen for a minute,” she said. “Personality profile. Of an individual who, for starters, has serious abandonment issues in childhood, major conflicts with his father, an older brother he adores but would also like to kill, and an extensive history of feeling like he’s not good enough and has something to prove to everyone. He isolates himself because he’s afraid that if he lets anyone in, they’ll realize he’s not as tough as he wants them to think he is. He’s frequently in denial about the emotional impact that major events in his life have had on him. He constantly seeks ways to prove that he’s worthy of respect but constantly fears that he’s not. He’s severely conflicted because he has a strong desire to submit to someone and surrender his constant vigilance, but he doesn’t trust anyone that much, and so the only way he can have a break from that constant vigilance is to have someone basically put him down more or less against his will and force him to give it up. At the same time, he’s spent his entire life building up serious anger issues that he flatly refuses to deal with or hides behind being a smartass, and the only way he knows to unleash some of that pent-up anger is to either do incredibly stupid and reckless things or to hurt other people, but he’s really not a cold-hearted person, so when he hurts someone, he always has a reason in his head why it’s necessary or justified. He needs someone he can trust to love him and take care of him, but also to put him back when he gets out of line, and he’s never found anyone he can trust with both of those things.”

“So did you get that profile out of Clint’s file, or…” Tony asked. 

“She’s talking about Loki,” Bruce interrupted. 

Tony frowned. “Umm… that was all about Clint.”

“I think you guys are missing the point,” Steve said. 

“What’s the point?” Tony asked. 

“That if you can’t tell which one of them she’s describing, it means they’ve got an awful lot in common in an awful lot of ways.”

Natasha nodded. “A lot of really disturbing ways, to be honest. And there’s no part of that profile that doesn’t fit Clint AND Loki. Which means…”

“Either they’re a perfect match,” Bruce said, “or they’re the most trouble it’s possible to get each other into.”

“I’d lean toward the latter,” Tony said.

“I’m going with Tony on that one,” Steve said. 

“So am I,” Natasha said. “Look… Loki’s crazier than Clint, but I think it’s only because he’s had a lot longer to get that way. And from what Thor told me and what Clint showed him, the first time Loki tripped that survival instinct messing with Clint was an accident, but it looks like there were times after that when he was definitely tripping it on purpose. He wanted Clint triggered and angry and he wanted Clint to be that person who could put him down… but then when it was all done and over, he could take control back and start giving the orders again.”

“So he blocked Clint’s memory of it…”

“Which makes him seem more powerful?” Natasha asked. “Thinking that he had total control and did what he wanted with Clint against his will, or knowing that Clint’s got a will to survive and protect himself that’s so strong it snapped that control, and worse, that he turned that strength on Loki, and worse than that, Loki really liked it?”

“So how many times…” Bruce asked. 

“I don’t think Clint’s totally sure. He’s still sort of confused. That’s why I left him with Thor instead of bringing him down here. When he can put a complete sentence together, we’ll drag him back into it. But Loki had him for days, and there’s a lot of time unaccounted for, and it seems like it wasn’t just something that happened once or twice. Once Loki figured out how to push that button…”

“So what does that mean for his intentions as far as getting that Tesseract energy out of Clint without hurting him?” Bruce asked. 

“Nothing,” Natasha said. “If he has to hurt or kill Clint to do it, he’ll rationalize it in his head.”

“Does it give us anything we can use against him?” Steve asked. 

“We know we can push the same button by broadcasting those wavelengths…” Tony said. 

“Yeah, and possibly do severe and irreparable damage to Clint’s brain,” Bruce said. 

“Well, that’s the part that’s a problem,” Tony agreed. “But it’s not a problem for Loki, and I have a feeling that he’s going to be able to find out through Clint that we can do that. He might not have the Tesseract or his magic glow stick anymore, but we may have accidentally given him a way to still try to trigger that.”

Natasha frowned. “Okay. We’re going to have to make sure everything we’ve worked on is behind some pretty strong security. Even if Loki can find out from Clint what we’re been doing, he doesn’t have a supercomputer that’s already calculated the wavelengths required. So his only option’s going to be to hack either yours or S.H.I.E.L.D.’s, and I don’t think Loki’s a hacker, but I do know that S.H.I.E.L.D. security around anything regarding the Tesseract is as tight as it gets.”

“You and Tony got in,” Bruce said. 

“I’m a professional spy and Tony’s a professional genius,” she said. “We can’t risk triggering that much energy in his brain again… who knows how many times Loki did it, and now we’ve done it too, and we have no idea what kind of permanent damage that could possibly be doing. The problem is that I don’t think having that energy stored in his head is doing anything good for him either, even if it didn’t make him a target for Loki, and we have no idea how to separate it and him.”

“Bruce and I have been working on it,” Tony said. 

“What have you got?”

“Nothing,” Bruce said, before Tony could make something up. “We’ve got nothing. S.H.I.E.L.D. never tested this kind of scenario and there’s no data on it, and we’re not willing to take the risk of damaging the only person we know who’s been subjected to it. We talked to Thor, but he doesn’t know much about it, really… the Tesseract doesn’t belong to Asgard. It belongs… somewhere else. It’s something else. It doesn’t belong on Asgard any more than it belongs here on Earth…”

“So where did Loki learn to use it?” Steve asked. 

Natasha raised her eyebrows. “That’s a pretty damn good question.”

“Someone taught him how to use it. Or gave him access to it, or something,” Bruce said. “And I’m assuming it’s a somebody that isn’t human or from Asgard or any other kind of person that any of us have ever met.”

“So Loki was playing with someone else’s toy,” Tony said. “That’s interesting.”

“Why?”

“Because… I’m thinking whoever he got the thing from, it’s not like they have a few hundred Tesseracts laying around and just hand them out to anyone who asks.”

“So Loki had to offer something in return,” Bruce said. 

“That’s what I’m thinking. And…”

“And when he lost the battle and the Tessseract, he blew his end of the bargain,” Natasha realized. “He owes somebody. He owes them big-time. And whatever energy from the Tesseract he can recover from Clint might help save his ass.”

“He’s running scared,” Steve said. 

“Which makes him dangerous,” Natasha added. “We’re not his biggest problem right now, except that we’re standing between him and the human that happens to be holding all that energy.”

“If he’s running scared, though…” Tony said thoughtfully. “He might be in a position to negotiate.”

“We don’t negotiate with psychopaths,” Steve said. 

Natasha shrugged. “I do it all the time. But I’m not using Clint as a bargaining chip.”

“He’s got to have some idea how to get to that energy,” Tony said, “but he doesn’t have the technical know-how. What if he was willing to agree to work with Bruce and I to develop something that could do that?”

“What are the terms?”

“The terms of the agreement are that he gets to keep the energy if we recover it, but only if Clint’s unharmed in the process. Clint gets hurt, the deal is off and we toss him out on his ass to face whoever is after him.”

Natasha crossed her arms. “I don’t think I can make that call. I don’t trust Loki not to hurt Clint just for shits and giggles.”

“No… but do you trust him to look out for his own best interests?” Bruce asked. “If we make it so the only way for him to get what he needs is to make sure we can keep Clint safe…”

“Until you actually test the equipment, and it kills Clint and Loki runs off with his stuff anyway,” Natasha warned. 

“Well, we’ll have to put some contingency plans in place,” Tony said. “I’m not as crazy as Loki, but I know Bruce and I together are smarter than he is.”

“It’s dangerous.”

“How dangerous is leaving that stuff loose in Clint’s head and waiting to see what Loki’s next move is going to be?” Tony asked. “What if he comes after Clint when we’re in a fight? Or when he goes off somewhere by himself? We can’t protect him forever.”

Natasha sighed. “Let me think about it. And we’ll have to talk to Clint, and he may not be very coherent for a little while.”

“I’m taking that as a ‘yes’,” Tony said. “Let’s get started.”

“I didn’t say that!” she protested. 

“You will,” Tony said cheerfully. “Come on, Bruce. Let’s take a look at that containment unit we found the other day.”

 

She scowled, but there was no one but Steve left to see it. 

“Problem with teams,” he said, leaning back in his chair. 

“What’s that?”

“You don’t get to call all the shots,” he said. “Tony and Bruce want what’s best for Clint just as much as you do, you know.”

“I know, I know. I just…”

“Don’t like having to trust someone else with something that you can’t do yourself?”

“Maybe,” she said, glancing at him. 

“Bruce said the thing with you and Thor…”

She looked away. “I told you…”

“I’m still not willing to hurt you and I’m never going to be,” he said. “I am still willing to be whatever else you’d like to let me be.”

She studied him carefully for a long moment, considering. He looked back evenly and without flinching. 

“My room. Ten minutes,” she said, and turned quickly on her heels and headed toward the lab doors before he could respond. 

“Where’d she go?” Tony called, from across the lab. 

“Got work to do,” Steve said, standing up and straightening his clothes. “We’ll be back in a little while.”

Bruce snorted. “Yeah. Work to do. Have fun.”

Steve was somewhat proud of himself that he only felt his cheeks turn slightly red as he marched toward the hall. 

 

 

Clint wasn’t sure if he’d been sleeping or just drifting again; his eyes would focus well enough to read the digital clock beside the bed now, but his brain still wasn’t capable of putting together what the numbers actually meant in relation to what part of the day it was and how much time had passed. He glanced over at Thor, who was still sitting in the chair next to the bed, long legs outstretched and arms crossed behind his head. Seeing Clint stir, he looked over and grinned at him. 

“Hello, little Hawk.”

“Why… am I still such a mess?”

“You’re still recovering.”

“Taking too long. What… is it tomorrow?”

“No,” Thor said, chuckling. “It’s still today, although it’s late in the evening. Would you like some food?”

“Ugh. No. Some water?”

“Of course.”

When he returned, he had a cup of ice water. Clint sat up and tried to take it from him, but his fingers refused to curl properly to hold it. 

“Easy,” Thor said. “You won’t be happy if you spill cold water all over yourself.”

He steadied Clint’s hands with his own as he drank, then slumped back down to the bed. 

“What the hell happened?”

“I’m not bothering to explain it again, little Hawk… I’ve explained it every time you’ve woken up, and you don’t remember anything I’ve told you. You asked the scientists to do an experiment, and they did, although they would have refused had they known it would impact you so badly.”

“Oh.”

He twisted uncomfortably against the mattress; his entire body ached and unpleasant twitches kept pulsing through his arms and legs. 

“Are you all right?” Thor asked. 

“Feel like shit. Hurt all over.”

“If you wish, I will attempt to assist, but if you would rather be left alone…”

Clint shook his head; anything would be better than this. Thor stood up slowly and deliberately. 

“How much of my clothing do you wish me to keep on, little Hawk?”

“None.”

“Are you certain? I will tell you that I’m certainly not going to play any games or take any risk of hurting you when you’re not fully coherent or able to agree to it.”

Clint sighed. “Does that mean no sex?”

Thor chuckled, a rumble deep in his chest. “I didn’t say that. I said no rough sex.”

“Oh. Okay.”

Thor stripped down quickly, since he didn’t usually wear much besides a pair of jeans and a t-shirt anyway. He lifted the blankets and slid into the bed behind Clint, one large hand pressing him gently to roll him forward and bare his back, where Thor’s fingers could expertly find the knots and stiffness in the long, wiry muscles, tight and strong from a lifetime of drawing a bow. Clint muttered something and slumped into the pillows, letting Thor’s hands work their way from his neck and shoulders all the way down to the curve of his lower back. 

“Is that better?”

“Mmm-hmmm.”

Thor’s hand lingered low on Clint’s spine, stroking lightly. Clint was barely half-conscious of what was happening, but he felt the touch and arched up into it, seeking more. The hand that had been resting on his back slid down to rest on his ass, squeezing lightly. 

“Is that what you want?”

“Mmm…”

“That’s not a word, little Hawk.”

“Yes. Is that better?”

“Much better,” Thor said, his large hand absently fondling Clint’s ass. “What else do you want?”

“You… please. See… even asked nicely.”

Thor grabbed him by the shoulders and rolled him back over so he could look him in the face, but even though Clint’s words were still slurred, his eyes were alert and he was wide awake. Satisfied that Clint at least was fully aware of what was going on and what he was agreeing to, Thor grinned and kissed him. Clint pressed up against his body, hands unsteady but demanding as they grabbed at his shoulders and his hair. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised. 

“Better not,” Clint muttered. “Got things to do here.”

To demonstrate, he grabbed Thor’s hand and led it down to feel his cock hardening rapidly under the thin fabric of his boxers. 

“I suppose we could get rid of those,” Thor suggested. 

Getting rid of Clint’s boxers somehow ended up involving Thor’s extremely talented mouth wrapped around Clint’s cock while his always-busy hands had managed to locate the lube and slide two fingers into him before starting to work on a third. Clint’s brain wasn’t at all coordinated enough to distinguish between the heat around his cock and the burn of three large fingers stretching him open, and he didn’t care at all; it was all good and he wanted all of it, and more, if there was more.

Thor grinned up at him. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah… but you’re going to kill me…”

Thor laughed and slid up to bring himself into range to reach Clint’s mouth and throat and jaw with kisses and light nips, but his three fingers were still buried deep and were twisting at an angle that left Clint’s already-scrambled brain barely able to process what was happening. Thor must have read the overwhelmed confusion on his face, because he stilled his fingers and leaned in to kiss him slowly, steadily, grounding him. 

“All is well. You know I will not harm you.”

Clint nodded slightly, starting to put a few scattered thoughts together again, but still achingly aware of Thor’s fingers and what he desperately needed them to be doing. 

“Please…”

“In a moment. We have time. I want you here with me.”

Clint twisted and tried to press down against Thor’s hand, while his own hands groped uncertainly above his head, seeking something to hold onto. 

“Tie my hands. Please.”

“Not today,” Thor said. “I hate to deny you anything, but you’re not entirely yourself, and I won’t risk your safety. Besides, you don’t need your hands bound.”

“I don’t… know what to do with them,” Clint managed, not even sure what he was trying to say, but Thor seemed to understand, because he reached up with his free hand and grasped Clint’s bowstring-calloused fingers, leading one hand and then the other to rest on the back of Thor’s neck, against the warm skin beneath the long hair. 

“They can stay right there,” he said. 

Clint blinked at him; there was something strange and unsettling about it, but he left his hands where Thor had put them. Thor nodded approvingly. Clint whined and shifted his hips against the pressure of Thor’s fingers again. 

“You want something more, little Hawk?” 

“Fuck. Yes.”

“Are you ready for…”

“Ready as I’m going to be.”

He felt a sudden emptiness as Thor withdrew his hand, and then felt the warmth and the strength of the body that pressed between his legs and lowered gently down on his chest. There was the burning pressure of Thor’s cock working its way into him, a stretch no amount of preparation could fully ready him for, but he wanted it, needed it, and shifted his hips upward to encourage the slow slide inward. At the same time, though, he found himself suddenly distracted by Thor’s chest against his, Thor’s hands in his hair, against his cheek, Thor’s mouth against his own. He realized his hands were still on the back of Thor’s neck, and that without realizing it he was drawing him down, pulling him in, his body inviting the closeness even as his brain protested it. 

 

The closeness. The intimacy, he realized, was what felt strange. There was supposed to be more fucking involved in this; less kissing, less closeness, less warmth. He shifted uneasily, but somehow his hands didn’t want to move from where they were, and somehow he couldn’t pull himself away from the heat of the kiss. 

Thor stopped and looked down at him. “You are…”

“It’s all right. Don’t stop…”

“Clint…” he said, frowning. “Do you know the difference between fucking and making love?”

Any other time, Clint would have had a smartass answer to that, but his brain wasn’t firing on enough cylinders to come up with a lie that would fool Thor, and he knew it, so he just shook his head. 

“Why not?”

“Because nobody loves me.”

“You are very wrong, my friend. You are loved by many.”

“It’s a lie,” Clint murmured, turning his face away. “It’s always been a lie.”

“No, little Hawk. You just never allowed it to be anything else.”

Clint couldn’t handle any more words, but he dug his fingers in and pulled Thor back down against him, and he held him there as their bodies shifted together, until Clint lost every bit of focus and sense he’d been able to hold onto and gasped against Thor’s mouth, stunned by the force of his release and by Thor’s low moan, the shudder that ran up his body and stirred the damp skin under Clint’s fingers. 

After a moment Thor slid down to lay beside him, muttering something in a language Clint was fairly certain had never been spoken on Earth, and draped an arm over him. Clint rolled and buried his head in the security of Thor’s broad shoulder, too overwhelmed and too tired for any more talking, but Thor, as usual, seemed to already know that, because he just tucked Clint closer against his side and quietly asked JARVIS to turn down the lights.


	44. Chapter 44

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It seems that playing with the alien energy that someone decided to store in your head has potentially lethal side effects. Now, if Clint is going to survive it, the team needs help from someone they know they can't trust... but considering he needs their help as well, maybe they can at least negotiate. Tony's good at negotiating. Maybe a little too good sometimes.

Bruce and Tony were in the lab, brewing strong coffee and arguing about how to start the day’s work (Tony suggesting that perhaps a brief mind-clearing activity involving the removal of both their pants might kick-start their creativity, and Bruce insisting that said activity would just result in Tony wanting to take a nap in the corner while Bruce did all the work) when Thor barged through the lab doors without any of his usual cheerful greetings. He was carrying Clint in his arms, and nothing about the awkward angle of his hanging limbs or the unresisting sag of his head looked like anything good. 

“What happened?” Tony demanded. 

“I can’t wake him, and he’s cold,” Thor said. “Do something.”

Tony glanced over his shoulder and spotted one of the bots lurking around the corner. 

“Hey! Get us a cot and drag it out here by the main computer! And no fucking around!”

Bruce was already unwinding the tangle of leads from the scanner they’d used the day before. 

“We should’ve kept him hooked up and monitored,” he muttered. 

“I don’t think that would have helped,” Thor said, shaking his head. “Last night when we went to sleep, he was still not himself, but he was talking and alert.”

“He wasn’t himself?” Bruce asked. “He was still disoriented, having trouble putting things together?”

“Yes, and he asked me the same questions every time he woke.”

Bruce sighed. “So his brain never really got back to normal after what we did… it’s my fault. I should have been keeping a closer eye on him…”

“It’s not your fault,” Natasha said, striding briskly into the lab just as the bot appeared from somewhere, dragging one of Tony’s napping cots. 

“What are you doing here?”

“JARVIS called me. And it’s not your fault… I authorized this.”

“I don’t think we gave you much choice,” Tony said. 

Thor carefully laid Clint down on the cot. “If I recall correctly, the choice was, and has always been, Clint’s and no one else’s.”

“Except when it was Loki’s,” Natasha said. “Okay. There’s no point in talking about who authorized what. Clint would have figured out a way to do it to himself if we hadn’t…”

She crouched down beside the cot and pressed her fingers to his throat. 

“His pulse is fast, but he’s cold. He’s really cold. Get an electric blanket so we can warm him up. This looks like what was happening to him when we first got him back, except worse.”

Bruce looked up from attaching the sensors to Clint’s head. “What if the effects are cumulative? What if every time this stuff gets triggered in his head, it does more damage?”

“If that’s true, Loki would know it,” Natasha said. “And if he’s still got any connection with Clint, he knows what we’ve been doing…”

“It’s not a good thing for him, either,” Tony said. 

“Why not?”

“Because from the data we’ve been able to collect on whatever kind of energy the Tesseract produces, it looks like if it’s not actually in the cube, it’s unstable and there’s a high potential of it being converted to your more usual kinds of energy… like heat or light or radio waves… and being lost.”

“And if our theory is correct, Loki really can’t afford to have that happen. So if he realizes we’re doing something that’s destabilizing Clint and the energy he’s storing…”

“Please pardon the interruption, Dr. Banner,” JARVIS said, his voice cutting suddenly into the conversation, “but there is an individual who meets my security profile of Loki downstairs at the front desk saying that Agent Barton contacted him and asking to see him.”

“Wait… Loki’s downstairs asking to come in like a regular person?” Tony asked. 

Natasha glanced at Thor. “Could Clint have contacted him?”

“Probably not deliberately, but if Loki has been monitoring the Tesseract energy he would have realized that it is becoming dangerously unstable.”

“And that would be enough to make him take the risk of waltzing in here like an invited guest?”

Thor looked at her. “If Clint dies, Loki loses what Clint has.”

“Shit,” she muttered. “Please tell me we didn’t make this stuff unstable enough fucking KILL him. Please.”

Tony’s eyes were fixed on the computer monitors, which had started displaying data from the sensors Bruce was still attaching. 

“JARVIS? Tell me what I’m looking at.”

“According to the current readings, Agent Barton’s brain waves are profoundly abnormal and severely disordered. Data indicates that this level of electrical destabilization in the brain is not compatible with life.”

For a moment, all of them were silent. 

“Are you shitting me?” Tony asked. 

“No, sir. I do not have the programming capacity to…”

“Well, do something to restore some normal electrical activity…”

“Sir, we do not currently possess a method of overriding or undoing the damage that the Tesseract energy is causing.”

Natasha’s face didn’t change, but her fingers resting on Clint’s bare chest shook almost imperceptibly. “Then we’ve only got one thing we can do. Loki’s here for a reason. JARVIS, send Steve downstairs and have him handcuff Loki and bring him directly to the lab.”

“Will handcuffing him do anything?” Bruce asked. 

“No,” Natasha said. “But if he lets Steve do it, it means he’s desperate enough to play our game.”

“We’re just as desperate,” Tony said. “He has to know that.”

“He doesn’t,” Thor said. 

“Why not?”

“Because all he knows, he has seen through Clint’s eyes,” Thor said. “So although we know how much we care for him and what lengths we will go to in order to protect him, Clint has never believed that, and that means Loki doesn’t know whether to believe it either. He knows what we’ve said, but he knows Clint doubts it, and that makes him doubt it…”

“Because Loki thinks like Clint,” Natasha said. “No one can be trusted and no one really cares enough to be there when your back’s against the wall.”

“Loki will underestimate how desperate we are to protect him,” Thor said, running a hand through Clint’s hair. 

“Good,” Tony said. “We need him to underestimate us, because Bruce and I need him to help us come up with the science to create another vessel for this energy and transfer it, and we have to do it pretty damn quickly, and Loki needs to think it’s his problem more than our problem, or he’s going to be an asshole just to be difficult.”

“Captain Rogers is on his way to meet Loki,” JARVIS said. “Do I need to institute any particular security procedures?”

“Not just yet,” Tony said. “He’s going to be good, for now. He needs us. If he knew how to take what he wanted from Clint, he’d have done it already. He needs the technology that Bruce and I can engineer.”

“How fast can we engineer it?” Bruce asked, looking up at the monitor. “I don’t know how long Clint can maintain with that going on in his head.”

“Long enough,” Natasha said, her voice calmer despite the emotions warring behind her eyes. “It’ll have to be. So work fast.”

“We will,” Tony promised. 

Natasha turned back to Thor, who was still running his fingers between the sensors attached across Clint’s head. 

“You have to stop doing that. You can’t touch him. You can’t even be near him.”

Thor drew his hand back with an expression of hurt and confusion. “Am I doing something wrong?”

“No,” Natasha said, “but we’re dealing with Loki, and he’s your brother, and he can read you like a book…”

“And he might have a grudge against all of us after the whole shutting-down-his-invasion-thing in New York,” Tony added, “but his grudge against you goes way, way back. And he may be trying to cover his back and save his own ass right now, but if he realizes he’s got a chance to break something that’s yours and that it’s really going to hurt…”

“He’s crazy,” Natasha said. “And I’m not putting it past him to make a last-minute decision to take his risks with whoever he’s dealing with just for the sake of getting the chance to kill someone you love.”

“I don’t want him to be alone,” Thor said, reluctantly stepping back. 

“I’ll stay right here with him,” she said. “Loki already assumes that there’s something going on between Clint and I, and he’ll get some sick pleasure out of me playing the emotionally devastated and helpless female… it’ll make him feel superior, and that might keep him a little bit distracted. He’s going to see me as too weak and pathetic for it to be worth hurting Clint just to hurt me. Hurting Clint to hurt you, though…”

Thor sighed. “I will go and attempt to assist our scientists.”

“I’ll be here with him,” Natasha said, and as Thor watched she quietly went about the business of putting on a new face, frightened and grief-stricken. 

“You’re good,” he said. 

“I have to be.”

“Captain Rogers and Loki have arrived,” JARVIS declared. 

 

 

Loki strolled into the lab with a small, amused smile that seemed to mock both the handcuffs around his wrists and the taller man at his side. Natasha wasn’t sure what Loki had said to Steve in the elevator, but whatever it was, Steve’s jaw was set and his expression was rigidly determined. 

“Good morning, Avengers,” Loki said, nodding his head slightly. He glanced at Clint stretched out on the cot, covered with sensors and electrodes, and Natasha sitting cross-legged on the floor beside him with tears shining at the edge of her eyes, and his smile widened just a bit. 

“Look,” Tony said. “Nobody’s here to fuck around, including you. I don’t know who you’re in trouble with or what you have to do to get out of it…”

Apparently Loki hadn’t realized that they had put that piece together yet, but he quickly recomposed himself. “That is none of your concern.”

“It is my concern,” Thor said, his voice deepening into the range that he seemed to reserve especially for his brother. “If you need our help, you will be honest with us… as honest as you are capable of being.”

For a moment, Loki’s face shifted as he struggled with his options before finally relenting. 

“I will admit that I… may require some assistance that even these generally useless mortals are capable of providing. However, I do believe that my assistance is also required, at least if you would like your archer to live to see the end of this day.”

“Then tell us what we’re dealing with, and we’ll figure out what to do,” Tony said. 

Loki sighed, rolling his eyes and looking suddenly very much like a teenager caught out after curfew and being forced to admit to his whereabouts. 

“What do you wish to know?”

“Who gave you control of the Tesseract?”

Loki glanced at Thor. “You know what being holds many of the cosmic cubes in his possession. You’ve met him before.”

Thor scowled. “You speak of Thanos.”

Tony raised an eyebrow. “Who is Thanos?”

“He is a power-hungry being from a world not like either of ours,” Thor muttered. “He is fascinated by death, and if he had his way the universe would be destroyed entirely.”

“So he decided to start with Earth, huh?” Bruce asked. “Gave you one of his cubes and a little army to play with and sent you down here to test the waters?”

“This planet was to be mine,” Loki hissed. 

“He wants his cube back,” Tony said. “But you don’t have it. It’s in Asgard, and you can’t get it. But you put a good bit of its energy into Clint here, and if you can get that back, maybe it’ll be enough to keep this Thanos guy from coming for your ass. Am I on track here?”

“In your own ignorant and ill-mannered fashion,” Loki said grudgingly. 

“Good,” Tony said. “Because here’s the thing, although I’m pretty sure you already know it, and that’s why you’re here… Clint figured out what you did to him… or did with him, or whatever. And he decided he had to test it out. And you know what that did.”

“There are limits to what your fragile and incompetent human brains are capable of tolerating,” Loki said. “Your friend and his experiments have destabilized everything, and if we don’t find a way to transfer the energy from him into another vessel capable of holding it, he’ll die and then it will all be lost.”

“Him not dying is part of the deal,” Tony said. 

“There is no deal,” Loki retorted. 

“Well, then, here’s the deal. Bruce and I have a lot of toys in this lab. We can do some pretty spectacular things… you know, like design a flying metal suit that can kick a demigod’s ass…”

“Tony…” Bruce sighed. 

“Anyway,” Tony said, without missing a beat. “You work with us, and we figure out how to make this vessel and accomplish the transfer. We should be able to do it… it may be alien energy we don’t really know what to do with, but it should behave like other forms of energy. We figure that out, and you get a nice little capacitor or whatever with your precious cube energy in it, and you go do what you want with it. But the other end of the deal is, Clint’s still alive when we’re done. And I don’t mean barely alive… I mean that he’s not damaged in any way.”

Loki glanced at Clint. “I am not responsible for the damage he’s already done to himself…”

“The fuck you aren’t!” Natasha shot back. 

“Well, technically, you are,” Tony said. “But for the purposes of this deal, we assume that you don’t have the ability to undo what’s already been done to him. So the deal is that he’s absolutely no worse at the end of this than he is right now. And if he takes any damage, or we think you’re fucking with us, we’ll take that energy you want so much and set it loose to go flying off into the stratosphere.”

There was a long moment of silence as Loki contemplated. Finally, he nodded. 

“I am in agreement. Although I would be lying if I promised you that this could be accomplished without hurting Agent Barton… I don’t know whether that’s possible or not. But I accept the terms of your negotiation. If I fail to protect Agent Barton from harm, you will do whatever you wish with the Tesseract energy. But how do I know that any of you intend to keep your end of this bargain?”

Tony shrugged. “If you hold up your end of the deal and we don’t turn over the goodies to you at the end of it, you can kill Agent Barton.”

Tony had enough practice and natural skill to pull off the lie without a trace of hesitation. Bruce’s face revealed a flash of horror, but he turned quickly to face the computers before Loki could see it. Natasha burst into tears, and Tony marveled in the back of his mind at how expertly she could do that if she felt like it. Thor crossed his arms and stalked off to the back of the lab; Loki watched him go. 

“My brother does not seem to appreciate your negotiating tactics,” he noted. 

Tony shrugged again. “Your brother’s a big sucker. You know how he gets about killing innocent people and all that.”

Loki smiled. “I am aware of his soft-hearted nature. It leads him into very little other than trouble and wasteful emotional attachments.”

“Well, I don’t do emotional attachments, so I’m making the arrangements,” Tony said. 

“You forget, my friend, that I have spent a considerable amount of time poking through your Hawk’s head. I know what you’ve told him, and I know what you’ve done…”

“What? You never told somebody something like that to get laid?” Tony asked, smirking. “He’s fucking amazing in bed. I’d tell him pretty much fucking anything to get him to spread his legs.”

Bruce’s fists clenched as he listened. Tony was a good liar. A really, really good liar. Or else he wasn’t lying and he really had been bullshitting Clint all along. But that would mean he’d been bullshitting Bruce, too. And that…

He shook his head and forced the thoughts away. This was what Loki did; it was a power nobody could take away from him. He drove wedges between people, made them say things they shouldn’t have said, made them lie, made them hate each other. He wasn’t falling under that spell. He trusted Tony. 

 

He kept telling himself that, over and over, until he heard Tony say something about getting to work, and then he felt just the briefest touch of Tony’s hand on his shoulder as he passed him. 

“Ready to get to work, partner?” Tony asked, his voice low and close to Bruce’s ear. 

Bruce felt some of the tension drain away. “Yeah. I am.”

“Hey, Cap!” Tony called. “I think we might need your shield for a little while.”

Steve scowled. “Are you going to ruin it?”

“No… but it might need a new paint job.”

Steve sighed. “I’ll go get it.”

“We should be able to use the vibranium to help isolate the energy we need,” Tony explained, nodding at the computer. “And I’ve been working on an alloy for the suit that’s designed to conduct any type of energy away from the suit’s computer systems, since that seems to be a potential vulnerability… I think I can design a system that will conduct the energy away from Clint and into our holding vessel. But that’s where you come in, God of Pissing People Off…”

Loki glared at him. Tony went on, either oblivious or unconcerned. 

“The thing I don’t have the technology to do is actually release the energy from Clint’s body so it can be conducted into something else. Can you do that?”

Loki nodded. “I believe I can. I am hampered by the loss of my tools and some of my abilities, but I should be capable of this… are you sure your contraption will capture it and not allow it to escape?”

“No. Are you sure you’re not going to kill Clint trying to get it out of him?”

Loki chuckled. “Your manners leave much to be desired, but you are not lacking in other skills.”

“You don’t get where I am by being a chump,” Tony said. “Go take a look at Clint and see what you think you can do, and Bruce and I will check out this radioactive containment unit that we’re thinking will work for energy storage. Hey, Thor… can you help Bruce and I carry this thing?”

Loki turned to inspect Clint, amused by Natasha’s tearful glares. Thor stormed out of the back of the lab, scowling deeply, and stood in front of Tony with his arms crossed. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” Tony said. 

“I heard what you said. About Clint, and telling him things just to… and…”

“Thor,” Bruce interrupted. “You’re Loki’s brother. You should be the last person who gets fooled by this game.”

Thor glanced at Tony. “I knew Natasha was a skilled liar, but that’s her job.”

“It’s my survival mechanism,” Tony said. “I need you to trust me here, big guy. Playing hardball is a game I learned right about the same time I learned to walk. We’re not going to let him hurt Clint and you know perfectly fucking well that Clint is…”

Thor nodded. “I trust you. But next time you’re going to use this particular skill of yours, you might warn others first.”

“Sorry. I’ll keep that in mind. But can we get that containment unit? I was serious about it being heavy. And Bruce… you know which alloy I’m talking about.”

“Yeah, I do. What I can’t figure out is what the hell you need Steve’s shield for.”

“I don’t need it for anything,” Tony said, grinning. “It was the best excuse I could think of to make sure Steve had his weapon if things go wrong, since his dumb ass didn’t grab it on the way down to get Loki. If something does go sour, I’d rather not have the Hulk loose in the lab, and Natasha will put bullet holes in everything, and the suit’s been known to be a little messy too, and Thor with his hammer is as bad as the Hulk…”

“You’re mentally unbalanced,” Bruce said. 

Tony shrugged. “Everybody knows that. So can we stop fucking around now?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who haven't seen the movie, haven't seen it for a while, or didn't catch the post-credit scenes, Thanos is the guy in one of those post-credit scenes who discusses being responsible for the attack on Earth and for setting Loki loose with the Chitauri army. He's a serious bad guy in the Marvel universe and really, really likes to destroy stuff. Like, the entire universe. Repeatedly, if I recall correctly.


	45. Chapter 45

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Clint's life in the balance and the distinct possibility that everything is going to go extremely wrong very quickly, it's going to take some quick thinking and some teamwork and a decent amount of luck for this plan to have a chance.

Over the hours Natasha had been watching Bruce and Tony work out of the corner of her eye, had taken note of Loki pacing close behind them, watching impatiently, of Thor standing guard in the corner with arms crossed and a suspicious glare fixed on his brother, and of Steve standing by the doors to the lab with his shield in his hand, a soldier on duty. She hadn’t missed a movement that anyone made, even though as far as anyone could tell she hadn’t looked up from staring at Clint. So when Bruce walked toward them, she pretended not to see him coming and made sure to jerk as if startled out of her anguish when he touched her shoulder. She glanced at Loki. 

“He’s watching you,” she murmured. 

“I know. I told him I was coming over here to check Clint’s vital signs,” Bruce said, his voice very low as he bent over to fiddle with the sensors on Clint’s head. 

“JARVIS can give you a readout of those anywhere in the lab. You needed an excuse to come over here. What’s going on?”

“Okay… I’ll try to make this quick, because I don’t want Loki getting nosy… you see that thing Tony’s halfway inside of, welding coils of some kind of weird alloy into? It’s a containment unit for working with highly radioactive materials.”

“Yeah.”

“He asked me a little while ago to go and look up the specs for the containment unit S.H.I.E.L.D. was using in their experiments.”

“But S.H.I.E.L.D. never developed a successful containment mechanism for the energy from the Tesseract. That’s what Selvig was working on, but…”

“Yeah. Never had it successfully contained.”

“So…”

“So Tony knows that. And Selvig and his team already tried a containment unit pretty much exactly like the one Tony’s working on, and it didn’t work.”

Natasha made sure to keep her distressed and overwhelmed expression on even as her mind was flashing through the possibilities. “Tony looked at the research. He knows it didn’t work. But Loki doesn’t. So you guys still have nothing that can hold that stuff.”

“No. But the super-conductive alloy Tony’s been developing to deflect energy away from the critical electronics in the suit should actually work to conduct the energy from Clint to the container… it’s just that the container’s not going to hold it.”

“Well, shit. What’s going to happen?”

“We have no idea. Tony might, but he can’t tell me. When Selvig’s team tried it, it was in a heavily shielded lead-lined testing room and they were on the other side of the door. But they were actually trying to pull energy out of the Tesseract and store it… so really, we’ve got nothing to compare this to.”

“But if we start evacuating the lab, Loki realizes the game is up. We have to play this out until he does whatever he has to do to get this stuff out of Clint’s head. At which point it will be too late to do anything.”

“Pretty much,” Bruce said, straightening up. “I’d better get back over there. Maybe you can go and pretend to cry on Steve’s shoulder for a minute and fill him in. There’s not going to be any way to warn Thor that I can think of.”

Natasha nodded. “So I guess we’ll see what happens.”

He started to turn away. 

“Bruce,” she said. 

He looked back. “Yeah?”

“The Other Guy.”

“I know. Believe me… I know. Keep your fingers crossed.”

Natasha did not cross her fingers. But she did begin mentally registering all the locations in the building where the Hulk-strength tranquilizer guns were stored and how long it would take her to get to each of them. 

 

 

“You sure you’re strong enough to haul this thing wherever you’re going?” Tony asked, sliding down to free his head from the inside of the barrel-shaped metal container he was working on. 

Loki raised an eyebrow. “I suspect I’ll be able to manage. I recall having very little trouble lifting you…”

“True. You didn’t do so well with the big green guy, though.”

“Are you attempting to irk me? It won’t work.”

Tony shrugged. “Worth a try. Are you ready to give this a shot?”

“Your device is ready?”

Tony sat up and held up the thick bundle of wires heavily wrapped in insulation that was coiled on the floor next to him. “Pretty much. This wire’s made of an alloy S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t even know exists yet, and in our tests there’s pretty much no form of energy it won’t conduct. And the containment unit is ready to go… it matches the specs for the one that they built at S.H.I.E.L.D., except mine is better, because I’m smarter than them. So the only part that’s left is how you want me to hook this up to Clint so you can get the juice flowing.”

Loki contemplated for a moment. “As unstable as the energy seems to be in its current container, I would expect that it would take any opportunity to travel through a conductor and into a more stable vessel. Am I right, my brother? You channel lightning.”

“Do not refer to my friend as a ‘container’,” Thor muttered, glaring at him. 

Loki smiled. “If you like, I can refuse to participate, and then we can all refer to him as a corpse. Would you prefer that?”

Thor’s scowl deepened. “If that happens, I will make you pay for it.”

Loki glanced at Tony and sighed. “He’s so easy to torment that it almost takes the fun out of it.”

“I don’t think I’d pick on someone who looked like that and carried a big mythical hammer,” Tony said. “Just from personal experience.”

“He doesn’t have his hammer,” Loki said. “My guess would be that he was in too much distress over your friend’s precarious survival to bother to bring his hammer with him.”

“I do not carry my hammer here,” Thor growled. “The only threat that has been allowed inside these walls is you.”

“Me?” Loki asked, holding out his hands. “I am unarmed. And last time I was here, that ill-tempered harpy shot me…”

“You are Loki,” Thor interrupted. “You are never unarmed.”

Loki reached over and patted Thor’s arm. “Now, now. Let’s not give away all my secrets, shall we? It ruins the fun.”

“Touch me again, and I will kill you.”

Loki grinned. “Ahh. But if you do that, your friend the Hawk will be dead.”

“Yes. But so will you.”

Loki’s smile faded slightly, and he turned back to Tony. 

“What is our next step?”

“That’s on you,” Tony said. “My equipment’s ready to go. If you can get that energy to make the jump from Clint’s body, the wires will be ready and waiting for it, and they’ll take it straight to the containment unit.”

Loki looked over the somewhat jumbled but obviously highly technological equipment Tony had put together. 

“Very well. But if there are any tricks…”

“No tricks,” Tony said. “What the hell would I want a bunch of brain-damaging fucked-up alien energy loose in my lab for?”

“I don’t trust you.”

“Oh, well. I don’t trust you either. Can we get on with this? JARVIS is telling me Clint’s not going to hold on a lot longer like this, and if he goes, it’ll be really bad for team morale, not to mention that you lose what you need. Can we skip the rest of the fucking around?”

“Of course. Let us proceed.”

Tony grabbed the end of the cord and unrolled it toward Clint. Natasha avoided looking up at them as they stood over her, letting Loki enjoy the moment of superiority over the woman who had tricked him and then helped defeat him. 

“You don’t seem so quick to pull the trigger today, Agent Romanov,” he said, in a conversational tone. 

“I can’t,” she said, keeping her voice flat, hollow. “I won’t sacrifice my partner’s life for the satisfaction of killing you.”

“Ahh. What an unfortunate circumstance to find yourself in,” Loki said cheerfully. “Relying on the person you hate most to save the person you love.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. There are people I hate more than you.”

“Stop playing,” Tony said, giving Loki a sharp look. “I’m starting to think you can’t hold up your end of the deal, and if that’s true…”

“Cease your complaining,” Loki said. “Give me your wires.”

He took the exposed end of the cord from Tony, where the insulation ended and revealed a medusa-like tangle of exposed silvery metal wires. He pondered for a moment, then spread the wires out with his fingers and laid them across Clint’s chest. 

“Back off,” Tony said, waving for Natasha to move. “You don’t want to get zapped with this stuff.”

 

 

She moved quietly backwards, but with Loki’s attention focused on his task, she had a quick moment to reach for her ankle holster, a move that she could perform in half a heartbeat and come up with a loaded pistol in her hand. She glanced at Thor, and was relieved to see that he was watching her and that he had gotten the hint; if she had drawn her weapon, something was going to go extremely wrong. He met her eyes, and she flicked her gaze toward Bruce. Thor nodded his understanding; the less physical damage Bruce took, the less chance of the Hulk making an unscheduled appearance. Natasha let her eyes flicker to the containment unit, and Thor quietly shifted himself until he was standing between Bruce and the machinery. She looked over at Steve; he had seen her draw her weapon too, but he was directly in Loki’s line of sight, and all he could do was give her a quick nod and shift his weight to be ready to move quickly. 

“Do it,” Tony said impatiently. “I’ve got stuff to do today.”

Loki rolled his eyes, but there was a moment of hesitation as he laid his hands over the wires on Clint’s chest, and Natasha realized that he really didn’t know if he could do this or not, and that he had been bluffing just as much as Tony. The confirmation of her suspicions didn’t surprise her, but she silently hoped that Tony had managed to out-bluff the god of bullshit, and smiled to herself at the realization that if there was anyone she’d ever met that could, it would be Tony Stark. 

An ice-blue glow began to rise under Loki’s fingers. Tony took a few quick steps backwards; it was all he had time to do. 

 

 

There was an ear-splitting crack as if the air itself had been shattered, and a blinding surge of blue light flashed through Clint’s body and into the wires. There was no time for any of them to even recover from the first blast before all of them were sent staggering by a silent wave that hit them with the force of a blow from the Hulk’s fists; even Thor staggered backward, and Steve’s shield hummed with the tension of recoiling so much energy. Everything glass in the lab exploded into shards at the same moment, and the bulletproof polymer that Tony used instead of glass for his doors and windows bowed under the shock wave. 

All eyes turned to the containment unit, glowing bright enough to leave stars dancing across everyone’s vision. As they watched, it grew brighter, and seemed to be vibrating with such intense force that the entire machine shuddered across the floor. Then, with another deafening lightning crack and another tremendous burst that shattered any glass left intact from the first one, the entire containment unit abruptly collapsed inward on itself, contracting into a tiny point of energy so bright no one could look at it before vanishing completely, leaving a dented and charred circle on the floor as the only mark of where it had been. 

In the moment that followed, there was a low rumble, but it was not a machine, and Natasha’s mind immediately turned to the location of the tranquilizer guns again, because from the spot where Bruce had fallen she could see the Hulk, eyes on fire, hauling himself to his feet and looking around, ready to go on the attack. Loki had been knocked backwards just like the others, and now he scrambled toward Clint, the only bargaining chip he had, but he stopped abruptly when his ears, still ringing from the cracks, registered another sound that was much, much closer: the sound of Natasha’s pistol being cocked a few inches from his head. 

“Will a bullet to the head at this range kill you?” she asked. “I’d really, really like to find out.”

The Hulk spotted Loki and roared. He had made it halfway across the lab in a few huge strides before he found himself looking down at someone else blocking his path, waving his arms. 

“Hey! Big guy!”

The Hulk looked down at Tony, and the murderous glare in his eyes made Natasha wonder if she had her weapon pointed in the wrong direction, but the Hulk just stood and studied him for a long moment. 

“Go away,” he muttered. 

“No. Stop. No smashing. No breaking stuff. No killing people. Listen to me.”

The Hulk shook his head stubbornly. 

“It’s not time for breaking stuff! It’s time for fixing Clint! We need Bruce to do that. Bruce can help Clint. We need him. Clint needs him.”

The Hulk reached down with one huge hand and brushed Tony aside, but the gesture was as gentle as the massive creature could manage. He lumbered toward Clint, who had been thrown from the cot and was sprawled unmoving on the floor amidst a tangle of wires. One gigantic finger reached down and cautiously prodded Clint. When he didn’t respond, the Hulk turned and glared at Tony. 

“Fix.”

“Bruce. We need Bruce. He can fix.”

With one last glare at Loki, the Hulk scowled and lowered his head. The process of watching the Hulk collapse back down to Bruce was like watching a video in rewind, except that his clothes didn’t reassemble themselves. 

Thor strode forward and grabbed Loki by the hair, hauling him to his feet. Natasha kept her pistol pointed directly between his eyes. Tony grabbed a scrap of some kind of cloth off one of the lab tables and handed it to Bruce to wrap around his waist as he staggered to his feet. 

“The monitors aren’t showing anything,” Natasha said, an edge of panic in her voice. “The ones hooked up to Clint. Why aren’t they showing anything?”

At that moment, amidst the utter chaos of the lab, there could not possibly have been any sound more soothing than JARVIS’s voice. 

“The monitors are not well-shielded from electromagnetic surges and were damaged, Agent Romanov. However, the servers and other equipment are well-shielded and remain fully functional. Some of Agent Barton’s monitoring sensors appear to have been damaged, but the ones that remain intact show stable vital signs.”

“Fuck. He’s alive,” Tony breathed. “Bruce…”

“Give me a second,” Bruce said, leaning heavily on Tony’s shoulder. “That whole two transformations in less than two minutes is a little rough.”

“Take your time, Dr. Banner,” JARVIS said. “From the readings I am able to obtain, Agent Barton’s EEG shows patterns that continue to be unstable, but appear to resemble the results one would see from someone in a post-ictal state following a severe epileptic seizure.”

“Does that mean he will recover?” Thor demanded. 

“It seems reasonable to expect that it will take some time, all things considered, but there is no reason to believe that he has suffered any significant permanent damage.”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” Tony said, exhaustion finally starting to show in the ragged edge to his voice. “I planned that whole thing.”

“You fucking liar,” Natasha said, grinning. “What the fuck WAS that, anyway?”

“I think it teleported itself completely out of this universe,” Tony said. “I have no idea where.”

“Back to Asgard, I would guess,” Thor said. “With nothing to contain it, the pull of the Tesseract must have been strong enough to capture it even from another world.”

Natasha looked at Loki, who squirmed in Thor’s grasp and looked back at her, his face registering the same weary smile she’d seen when they found him at the end of their battle in New York. 

“It’s not often someone manages to trick the trickster,” he said. 

She shrugged. “We’re a team. We’re just that good.”

“Fuck, yes, we are,” Tony agreed firmly. 

“What would you like me to do with him?” Thor asked, yanking Loki’s hair again. 

“JARVIS?” Tony asked. 

“Sir, as you requested, the isolation room has been reinforced with alloyed steel panels and the walls are heavily electrified.”

“Good. Thor, go ahead and toss him in there. It’s enough voltage to knock out the Hulk, so I don’t think he’ll have much fun trying to get out, but if he does, JARVIS will let us know, and we’ll come down and put some Hulk-strength tranquilizer darts in his ass. How does that sound?”

“Very suitable,” Thor said, hauling his brother off through the disaster of the lab. 

Natasha tucked her pistol back into its holster and knelt down to press her fingers to Clint’s throat as if needing to feel for herself that he was alive. She exhaled and looked up at Bruce. 

“What do we need to do for him?”

“Let’s get him up to a nice, quiet bed, and I’ll put some new sensors on him that haven’t been half-destroyed by something doing an interdimensional meltdown, and we’ll just watch him for now. If we’re lucky, his readings start to come back toward normal, but I think I want to sedate him, at least lightly, until they do.”

“Is the stuff gone? Is Loki gone, and… everything? Is it all gone?”

“Agent Romanov,” JARVIS replied, “my readings are not entirely complete due to damaged equipment, but I am not able to detect any traces of anything that resembles the Tesseract energy patterns.”

Natasha straightened up and looked at Tony. “Did you have any way of knowing that thing wasn’t going to take out this entire building and kill all of us when it melted down?”

“No. Actually, that was a distinct possibility.”

“But… you would have…”

Tony shrugged. “You know, teamwork. And shit like that. All for one and one for all and I really fucking need a large drink and a long nap right now. Today has been a little much.”


	46. Chapter 46

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Natasha and Clint discuss the apparent consequences of this whole "team" business.

Clint rolled over, feeling every muscle send a sharp complaint to his brain and trying to reassemble what the hell could possibly have happened to make him feel this bad. He had narrowed down the likely possibilities to being hit by a truck or squashed by the Hulk when he managed to finish the painful process of rolling onto his back and could turn his head to see Natasha sitting in a chair beside the bed, laptop on her lap, watching him intently. 

“You’re awake,” she said, closing the laptop. 

Something in her voice confused him even more. “Am I not supposed to be awake?”

“We didn’t expect you to come around this fast. Actually, we weren’t totally sure you were going to come around at all.”

“Oh.”

He glanced at the clock, then at the window; early morning, apparently. 

“What do you remember?” she asked. 

“Umm… not a hell of a lot. What happened? Did Bruce and Tony test some weird drug on me again? My head’s all fuzzy.”

“Well, two days ago you couldn’t even put words together, and yesterday morning you were unconscious, and yesterday afternoon we were pretty sure you were dead.”

Clint rested his head back on the pillow and tried to make some sense out of this statement, but failed. “I have no idea… what happened? Where is everybody?”

“Tony’s in the lab, trying to figure out how to reassemble everything that he managed to blow up or otherwise destroy. Thor and Bruce are on a video conference with Fury trying to explain why the fact that we somehow managed to cause a large object to reverse its own gravitational field and warp itself to a completely unknown destination in the time-space continuum isn’t as bad as it sounds. Steve is guarding Loki’s temporary holding cell in case he does anything stupid. And you and I are here.”

Clint contemplated this for a minute. 

“Okay. That’s a pretty good one. But seriously… what happened?”

She smiled and shook her head. “You remember insisting that Tony and Bruce test things on your brain to see what would happen?”

“Umm… sort of.”

“Okay. Well…”

She explained the events of the last two days, as quickly and efficiently as if it had been an official briefing. Clint listened and tried to follow everything, but she had to go over some parts of it twice before he could start to put it together. 

“So Loki is here. In a holding cell.”

“Yes.”

“And Tony was making the whole thing up about all the things…”

“Yes.”

“And everything blew up.”

“Not everything. Just a bunch of things.”

“And it worked?”

She glanced up at the camera in the corner of the room. “JARVIS. Shut off video monitoring.”

“Yes, Agent Romanov.”

She slid from her chair to the bed and before Clint could realize what was happening, she had a hand on each side of him, leaning over him and studying his face with intense focus. Uncomfortable at the stare, he looked away, and was startled when she lowered her head and kissed him. It was the kind of kiss he remembered from dirty hotel rooms or dark alleys or other random hideouts, the kind that was filled with heat and adrenaline and relief that they were both still alive and together and for that moment nothing in the world mattered more than that. He tried to reach up to her, but by the time he could convince his arms to move, she had already pulled away. 

“Yeah. It worked,” she said. “You’re back. And you’re you. There’s no more of anything that was Loki’s in there… he tried to take it all back, but it didn’t quite work out that way.”

“It’s really gone? You sure?”

“We ran a lot of scans on you while you were out. We’re sure. Nothing in there that doesn’t belong there,” she said, tapping the side of his head. 

“There’s all kinds of shit in there that doesn’t belong there,” he said, grabbing her hand before she could pull it back. “You must have had to put on a pretty good show for Loki.”

“We all did,” she said, squeezing his fingers. “Tony’s was the best, though. He absolutely knew that fucking thing was going to do something horribly destructive and he was going to be a couple of feet away when it did it, and he never blinked.”

“Taking risks doesn’t seem to be something that scares Tony much.”

“Depends on the risk,” Natasha said. “Getting killed, not so much. Getting his heart broken… too scary.”

Clint shook his head. “Thor had no idea what he was up to, did he?”

She smiled. “We decided it was probably best not to tell him too much… but he understood that this was…”

Her voice caught, and Clint looked at her curiously. 

“He understood it was this or nothing,” she said. “It was either fight for you or lose you for sure. And Thor wasn’t going to give you up without a fight. None of us were.”

“Even if it killed all of you?”

She shrugged. “I’m not quite sure how it happened, Clint, but we’re a team. We’re going to fight for each other.”

“Huh. I’m kind of… not used to that.”

“I guess we might as well get used to it,” she said. “JARVIS?”

“Yes. Agent Romanov?”

“Please report to the rest of the team that Agent Barton is fully conscious and that he has some minor retrograde amnesia, but is currently oriented to place and time and that he’s coherent and appears to be functioning without any serious impairment.”

“They will be extremely glad to hear it, Agent Romanov. I will warn you that it’s likely they will all arrive at this location very quickly… I can request that they not do so, but I highly doubt my requests will be followed.”

“I highly doubt it to,” she said. “Are you up for visitors, Clint?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Not really. Thor and Banner should be off their call with Fury by now, and Tony’s just fussing over the disaster in his lab, and Steve doesn’t really need to be guarding Loki… he tried to get out last night and ended up electrocuting himself a couple of times, and apparently that didn’t feel very good, because he’s pretty much quit.”

“I will monitor him closely while Captain Rogers steps away,” JARVS said. “May I turn the video monitoring back on now? Dr. Banner will complain if I don’t.”

“Sure,” Clint said, “since apparently one kiss is all I get anyway.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not going to be all you get from Thor when he gets up here,” she said, smirking. “Unless, of course, you’re not up for being manhandled by a demigod.”

“He can play pretty nice when he wants to,” Clint said. 

“I didn’t know you’d ever wanted anyone to play nice with you.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. The whole… needing other people? For something other than just to watch your back? It sort of messes with your head. Changes things.”

“I’m noticing that,” she said quietly. “JARVIS? Tell them he doesn’t need to see everybody at once and that if he’s up for it we’ll order some takeout and we’ll all have lunch together.”

“I will convey the message.”

“And tell them if they can’t follow simple instructions, I will teach them how.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Clint grinned. “You going to tell Thor he can come up? Because he’s going to, even if you threaten him.”

She smiled and kissed his cheek. “I know. But Steve follows orders, and Tony and Bruce are tolerably scared of me. So that’ll just leave you and Thor for a little while. I’ll see you in a few hours for lunch. What do you want?”

“Everything. And more of everything.”

“Sounds about right. Take it easy on yourself, okay? You’ve taken a pretty good beating.”

“You know I never take it easy on myself.”

“I know. But I trust Thor to make you,” she said, and smiled. “It’s sort of nice to be able to trust someone else to make you not do stupid things.”

“Is that part of the whole ‘team’ thing? Not letting each other do stupid things?”

“Maybe it’s more like using our judgment to know when to let each other do stupid things,” she said, walking toward the door. “Considering I did let Tony create an interdimensional warp and didn’t do a thing to stop him. And you’d better believe Fury’s going to have my ass for it… and I don’t care.”

“You never do,” Clint said. 

She glanced over her shoulder. “You’re here, right now, talking to me. I don’t care what had to happen to make that be true.”

The door slid closed behind her. 

 

.  
.  
.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter or two will probably be the end of this story. But I've turned it into the first part of a series called "Various Definitions" and there will be a second part, but the next one will be less Clint-centric (although probably still a little bit seeing as how I have sort of a serious Clint thing) and less of a single plot, and more just stories about all of them figuring out what the whole "team" thing is about now that they don't have the united purpose of keeping Clint's head together and Loki out of it. I will post the first part of the new one the same time I post the last part of this one, so if you are interested in following the whole team through a wide variety of activities (smut included), please feel free to hop on over and follow the new one! I'll repeat this little blurb when the new story has a first chapter to actually follow... and I hope very much that you have enjoyed this one and enjoy the last chapter or two of wrapping it up and moving on to some interesting team adventures!
> 
> I have been lucky to have to many fantastic readers and I really hope that some of you will consider it worth your time to keep following this crew!


	47. Chapter 47

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team cleans up some messes and tries to figure out what they're supposed to be doing now.

“Does this count as some kind of mind control?” Clint asked, as Thor’s fingers slid along the line where the black leather of the collar met the soft skin of his throat. 

“No,” Thor said. 

“I think it does,” Clint argued, “because I would never have agreed to this if you hadn’t started messing with my head.”

Thor laughed, and the arm that was hooked across Clint’s bare chest pulled him a little more securely into Thor’s lap. Clint muttered a protest but made no attempt to resist, letting his head fall back against the broad shoulder behind him and feeling the hard cock pressing against him. The mattress shifted beneath them as Thor leaned back slightly, spreading Clint’s legs further across his thighs and reaching to trail his fingers across Clint’s stomach and downward. 

“How long are you going to tease me?” Clint asked. 

“Until you lose the ability to complain about it.”

“Well, shit,” he muttered, digging his fingers into the strong arm that was still wrapped around his chest. “That could take a while.”

“I have time, little Hawk.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be doing something about Loki?”

“The team hasn’t reached a conclusion as to what exactly we should do with him yet,” Thor said. “And besides, he’s only been shut in there for a few days. And Bruce did give him some magazines to read.”

Clint blinked and raised his head. “What magazines did he give him?”

“I’m not sure what they were called. One had something about ‘Hot Makeup Looks for Summer’ and another said something about ‘Things to Please Your Man In Bed’… I glanced at that one, but it appeared to be all very basic as far as I could see… apparently the readers of this magazine are not terribly creative in bed. And there were far too many advertisements for perfumes and diet pills… although there were some recipes that someone here should try to make, as they sounded quite tasty.”

Clint grinned. “Good for Bruce.”

“Are you finished complaining now?”

“Not even close.”

“Then I will have to work a bit harder,” Thor said, and the hand that wasn’t pinning Clint in place reached for the lube on the nightstand. “Shall I see what I have in the drawer? I know there are some interesting items…”

“Fuck. I thought they told you to take it easy on me.”

“I am taking it easy on you, little Hawk. This is the smallest vibrating toy Natasha’s friends selected for me. There are much bigger ones in the dresser.”

“Oh. Wait… that’s the smallest one?”

“Yes.”

“Natasha’s a fucking sadist,” he muttered. 

“Only when her profession requires it,” Thor said cheerfully. “Now, what shall I do with this?”

“Umm… put it back in the drawer?”

“What fun would that be?”

 

 

The robots were making themselves scarce behind the servers, attempting to avoid Tony’s wrath as he surveyed the damage to his lab. Bruce leaned in the doorway and watched him for a minute. 

“You all right?”

“Yeah. We made a pretty good mess, though,” Tony said, without turning to look at him. 

“I called the company that handles the maid services for the building. They’re coming tomorrow with a cleanup crew that specializes in cleaning up after industrial accidents and things like that. They’ll get rid of all the glass and haul out the broken monitors and everything.”

“Huh,” Tony murmured. 

“And I called the place that S.H.I.E.L.D. gets most of their tech stuff from… they didn’t want to talk to me until I told them who I was and who you were, but when they heard Tony Stark was looking for some new equipment, they were pretty excited. They’re coming on Tuesday to show you their newest ultra-thin monitors and holographic displays and all that.”

Tony glanced over his shoulder. “Yeah?”

“They said they can have technicians in here installing it all within two days of you placing an order… assuming you’re willing to pay the cost of the rush delivery, which I figured you probably were.”

Finally, the tension in Tony’s shoulders slid away a bit, and he turned to Bruce and grinned. 

“You didn’t have to do all that. I’ve got people to do things like that for me.”

Bruce shrugged. “You can pay me on commission.”

“What are we going to tell them about the guy in the holding cell in the back room over there?” Tony asked, pointing toward Loki’s current residence. 

“We’ll just tape black paper over the window and tell him to be quiet or else we’ll turn up the voltage,” Bruce said. “Besides, I gave him about thirty back issues of some magazines I found downstairs in one of the offices… should make interesting reading, considering that they’re all either Cosmopolitan or Glamour…”

Tony rolled his eyes. “By the time we decide what to do with him…”

“Natasha and Steve want to have a meeting about that tomorrow morning,” Bruce said. 

“I thought we were having it later today.”

“She says we’re having it tomorrow because today you’ll be busy pining over your smashed-up lab, and she figures that considering Thor and Clint probably have the strongest opinions on what to do with Loki and they might not be in agreement about it, she figured it’d be better if they had some time to… you know.”

“So she figures if she leaves them alone to do nothing but fuck each other till tomorrow morning, they’ll be either too tired or in too much of a good mood to argue?”

“Pretty much.”

Tony sighed and looked back over his lab again. 

“It’s not really that bad, considering that according to the data you actually managed to create a microscopic wormhole in the time-space continuum for a fraction of a second.”

Tony half-smiled. “Yeah. I guess I can at least say that.”

“Besides, we’re going to get it all cleaned up. And you get to buy new stuff. And I came down here figuring I could think of some ways to distract you from it for a little while.”

“Oh?”

“Mmm-hmm. Let’s go up to my room and…”

“Hang on, now. There are scary things in your room.”

Bruce rolled his eyes. “For someone who wasn’t afraid to stand three feet away from something he knew was going to do something really destructive and possibly kill everyone, you’re a gigantic sissy about anything…”

“Don’t say it.”

Bruce raised his eyebrows. “What if I tell you I know the Hulk’s been lurking around in the back of my head thinking about it for hours?”

Tony chewed on his lower lip. “Has he.”

“He has. Want me to tell you what he’d like to see me do to you?”

“Ummm… maybe?”

Bruce chuckled and grabbed him by the arm. “Come on, you big baby. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m just going to make you behave.”

“I don’t know if I like that…”

“You fantasize about getting it on with the Hulk but you’re afraid to let me play a little rough?”

“You’re twisting my words around. You do that a lot. I don’t appreciate it, you know. I mean, I may have said something about the Hulk and something, but I didn’t…”

“Tony?”

“What?”

“Shut up and come to bed.”

Tony contemplated for a moment before shrugging. “Okay.”

 

 

Steve stepped out onto the balcony that wrapped around the outside of the living room, finding Natasha leaning against the railing, looking out over the city. 

“Everything all right?” he asked. 

She shrugged. “Seems to be, but that’s when I get the most nervous. That’s when things go wrong in the worst ways.”

Steve leaned on the railing beside her, giving her the few feet of distance he knew she expected unless she was the one to move closer. 

“I don’t think that’s going to happen this time. Not right away, anyway. I mean, some other disaster will come along eventually… but I think right now, we’re actually okay.”

She glanced over at him. “What makes you think that?”

“Because. Anyone who wants to start trouble with one of us… they’ve got the idea now that they’d be starting trouble with all of us.”

“You guys can’t protect me if the things I left behind decide to come for me,” she said quietly. 

“We can try,” Steve said. “They might decide it’s not worth it if they find out they’ve got Clint’s arrows in their face and everything in Tony’s arsenal pointed at them, and a big green guy ready to smash heads for you, and Thor throwing lightning around, and… well, me doing what I do.”

She chuckled. “Don’t sell yourself short. I saw you fight.”

“Anybody comes for one of us… they’re going to get all of us,” Steve said. 

“I don’t expect people who had nothing to do with my past to risk their lives protecting me from it.”

“Why not? We risk our lives protecting people we don’t even know.”

“Steve… I made a living killing people I didn’t even know,” she said. “You do realize that, right?”

“That’s who you used to be. I’m not the same person I used to be. Bruce… Tony… they’re not the same people they were, before things happened to them. And even Thor… and you know more about Clint than I do.”

She smiled slightly. “You know, it’s funny…”

“What?”

“Out of all of us… as long as anybody I know has known him, Clint has always been Clint. I think he’s been Clint since he and his brother took off on their own and he was just barely big enough to handle a bow and decided he was going to be the world’s greatest marksman, just because. But this… I think this has actually changed him.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Clint’s a control freak. And first Loki showed up and took his control away, and then Thor and the other guys came around and showed him he could actually trust someone else with the control…”

“What about you?” Steve asked. 

“I trusted them with Clint’s life…”

“Do you trust us with your life?”

She sighed and leaned out over the railing, looking down over the city below. “I’m working on it. I don’t… I’m not really a team player.”

“Doesn’t mean you can’t learn.”

She glanced at him and smiled slightly. “I can try.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE: END OF THE STORY! But this is a series and there will be more stories, except they won't be stuck to this plot line and they won't necessarily have to be directly related to each other, although they will follow a general ongoing plot of some sort. Or at least a general theme. Regarding teamwork, and the benefits and potential disasters thereof. Oh, and smut. More time for smut. 
> 
> The first story in the second part of the series is getting posted right now, so if you are feeling so inclined or just want to make an author happy, please pop over and continue to follow the new stuff!


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